


Speed and Status

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Sticky Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:24:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty





	1. Chapter 1

_**Speed and Status**_  
NC-17  
IDW  
Blurr/Drift  
sticky, the kind of degrading sex rockstars have with groupies, minor consent issues  
A/N Yeah, if you like Blurr, you won't like him here.  He's a celebrity, even in the Autobots, he's still 'special' because of his speed.  So he still has that narcissist's attitude toward others.  Characterization from Spotlight: Blurr. I was going to split this into two chapters, but...why bother.

 

 

Drift was hard not to notice. So Blurr really didn't blame himself for the way his optics kept sliding over to the white mech as he squatted on the floor of the small craft. Perceptor—what was left of him—had been stowed in a CR pod until they could do better on board the _Axion._ His energon, pink and scintillant, marred the strange mech's white armor in long streaks and smudges. And Drift just...sat there, stained, dirty, that long sword thing he wore behind his back tilted to one side. Not shocked, not nervous, just...there.

Perceptor had noticed the armor, read it as something alien, foreign. They'd all noticed the lack of faction marks. But Blurr had noticed...the beautiful. Honestly, Drift was probably the most breathtaking mech he'd ever seen. Well, and he meant this unironically, outside himself. But he'd paid a lot of money, and a lot of attention hiring the best designers, engineers, and aestheticians to look as good as he did.

Drift carried his beauty as naturally, as thoughtlessly, as though it meant nothing to him. And that intrigued Blurr. For as long as anything properly could.

“Blurr,” he announced, lowering himself into an elegant half-kneel next to the new mech.

The blue optics took a moment to focus, as though Drift had been mentally very, very far away. “Drift,” he said, quietly.

“Yeah, got that,” Blurr said, smiling broadly, charmingly. Fans had loved that easy cocky self-confidence.

Drift looked at him a moment, then dropped his gaze back down.

Shy? Well, Blurr could work with that. “So, Drift. Where you from?”

Drift shifted away, the gesture almost imperceptible. “Not important.”

Probably wasn't. Still, the reticence was not giving Blurr much to work with. “Kind of a coincidence, huh? Us meeting like this?”

The blue optics met his. “Not really.”

Blurr's easy smile faded, but he bucked himself up. Hard to get was one of his favorite kinds. They actually managed to hold his attention. “Hey, thanks for bringing back Perceptor.”

Drift twisted as if this had made him even more uncomfortable than Blurr's previous comment. The optics narrowed. “Why did you leave him?” A trace of hostility.

“Me?” Blurr shrugged. “I didn't leave him. I was in another part of the ship. I didn't know.”

Drift's hands twisted. “Don't mean you. Why any of you. He's one of you and you left him.”

Blurr faltered. Yeah, he didn't have an answer for that. Besides, it didn't matter. “Ask Kup or Springer, I guess. I just move. I don't worry about all the whys and wherefores.” He was fast. Literally. Speed was what he did, what he _was_.

Drift grunted.

This was not going well. Time to regroup. “What'd you do before the war, Drift?” Everyone had a good pre-war story.

“Starved.”

Really? A mech who looked like that? Blurr didn't believe it. But if it was true then Drift was possibly delightfully pure. That was a hot concept. How long had it been since Blurr had seduced an innocent? Back in his racing days, that had been his specialty. Hard to get and pure? Oh this Drift was hitting on all cylinders.

“Me,” Blurr said. “I was a racer. You might have heard of me? Seen me?” He straightened his shoulders.

“Blurr,” Drift echoed, as if retasting the name. “The racer.”

Blurr nodded, encouragingly.

Drift frowned. “Didn't have time for that slag.”

“That slag?” Torn between amusement and hurt—that 'slag' had occupied just about every waking moment of Blurr's life until the racetrack had been shut down. He remembered the hollow shock of it all.

The starkly beautiful face under the white helm shifted, the mouth's full lip plates working. “Prizes for running endlessly in a circle. On a nice flat, paved track.” One white shoulder armature moved, as if involving both in the shrug was just too much effort.

That's not what it—no, it was. Blurr pushed to his feet. “Glad to see you found the only thing that made my life meaningful so...beneath you.” He glared down at the newcomer.

Drift's optics rode up Blurr's frame. “Not beneath me. Trying too hard not to die to pay attention.” His hands clenched, and for a klik, a microklik, Blurr could almost see them in triggerwells of guns.

Whatever reply Blurr might have had was swallowed up in the sounding klaxons as their small craft bumped into the docking mouth of the _Axion._ But this, he thought, grimly, turning on his sleek blue heel, was not over. Blurr always got what he wanted.

 

[***]

They'd offered Drift Perceptor's quarters, Kup saying, rather awkwardly, that Perceptor, uh, wouldn't be needing them for a while. But that was another mech's property, another mech's things. It had felt like an invasion lying on another mech's berth. Too private. Too one-sided. Seeing more than he wanted to see of someone he didn't even know. He had no right.

So he'd crept out of the room and made his way to the small common room they'd crowded in earlier. An anonymous patch on no-mech's floor was much better suited to him, anyway.

Blurr's questions had bothered him. Not because they were unexpected, but because they were so soon. He'd hoped—stupidly, of course—that he could keep his history a secret, get a new start. It seems he wouldn't get that lucky.

He flopped onto his back, his hip-scabbards sliding outward along the floor to either side. What was he doing? Did he really, really mean to join the Autobots? He'd worked with them on Turmoil's ship because they had had a common aim, and he'd rescued Perceptor because, well, that's what Wing would have done. But this? Wing would not approve. He knew the jet's feelings about either side, either ideology. Could he go against that with Wing's death still so sore a wound? How was that not a betrayal? He'd have to answer that soon.

But right now, he'd have to make it through the night.

He clung to something like hope grimly, as if with both hands, as he let exhaustion and confusion pull him under.

 

[***]

Wing was touching him, his gentle hands sliding down Drift's sides, thumbs trailing over the seams in his new chassis. He could feel the weight of the other mech over his hips, long legs along his scabbards, the heat of his interface panel over Drift's.

Drift rolled his pelvic frame into the touch, making a soft, longing sound in his vocalizer. Sensations shimmered over his net, warm and tingling and bright, like little stars of electricity bursting and sliding down his systems.

Another stroking pair of touches, up his chassis, flirting with his shoulder armor, then down to the tight gaps in his elbows. He sighed, his own hands cupping and moving, reaching for the frame he could feel over him, the arms those hands were connected to.

That felt...somehow wrong. But before he could put the pieces together, a mouth covered his, glossa probing, insistent, demanding entry. He felt his own mouth respond, matching force for force, before a fog seemed to clear and his optics popped online.

The blue mech from the drop shuttle, the racer, was straddling his hips, bent over, optics closed, mouth working against Drift's.

Drift's grip hardened, pushing the hands away from him, angry at the deceit, bitterly despairing that it wasn't Wing, hope dying anew in his spark. The mouth tore away from his, but smiling.

“Thought I'd give you a memorable wakeup,” Blurr said, cheekily, grinding his pelvis over Drift's. Drift's ventilations caught, long restrained desire boiling over his net.

“Get off me.” The racer. The one who ran and partied while he starved.

Blurr pouted. “Shy, now? You weren't a few kliks ago.”

Because I thought you were Wing, Drift thought, bitterly. He fought with the lust rising in him, and Deadlock's voice was beginning to drown out Wing's soft memory. Here was a mech offering himself. Why not take him? Why not?

Because, he's not...Wing.

So, you're done forever. Life of celibacy.

No. But....

Why not now? This is something you'd never have had. This is another thing you missed. On Cybertron Blurr wouldn't have said a half a word to him. Here, he was touching him, wanting him.

“Not shy,” he said, his hands clamping over Blurr's forearms.

Blurr's smile grew, and it was nothing like Wing's, sharper, edgier, harder than Wing's had ever been, but it was a smile, someone pleased for Drift's attention. And he found himself hungry for that, arching his hips up against Blurr's, tugging him down into a kiss, one that he led, this time. Blurr purred over him, his hands cupping Drift's face for a moment before sliding them down between their bodies, snapping the catch on Drift's interface panel.

He laughed as Drift's spike jutted into his palm, already released, pressurized. “So eager, are you?”

“Been a while,” Drift muttered, twitching as Blurr's fingers squeezed the nodes at the head of his spike.

Blurr bent to look. “Interesting,” he murmured. Drift's entire body, exotic, foreign, the spike a bright gleaming silver with strange, intricate arabesques. He hitched up, opening his own interface panel, tipping forward to press his lip plates against Drift's, his glossa skimming over the dentae, feeling Drift shiver with desire, before he rocked back, gently, seating that silver spike in his valve.

Drift groaned, his head dropping back on the decking, feeling the supple warmth envelope his spike. Blurr, above him, tipped his head back, optics dimming with pleasure. For a long moment they rested there, simply feeling each other, the presence of another, around, inside. Blurr grinned, triumphant, moving his hips over Drift's, his thighs sliding along the scabbards, leaning forward to brace his hands on Drift's chassis, taking some of his weight as he began rocking slowly back and forth, the spike sliding in his valve.

Drift's hands slid over the blue armor of Blurr's forearms, up toward his chassis, the metal light and fragile, designed for speed and low weight more than protection. So different from the satiny white of Wing's armor, heavy yet gracile. And yet....

“Frag, you feel good,” Blurr murmured, optics half-lidded, content, concentrating on the feel of the spike swelling the lining of his valve, the cool slide of the sleek silver against his warmth, the shocking trickles of lubricant that passed between them.

Drift said nothing, lowering his hands to the waist, the hips, pushing upward, thrusting into the move, hard, without patience, driven by raw need.

“Impatient, aren't you?” Blurr said, softly, leaning over, letting his vocalizer tickle the white audio receptor, letting Drift's hands close over his hips, stabilizing the fast, demanding thrusts. “I don't mind,” he added. “Harder, if you want.”

Drift growled in response, not an angry sound, but a wild, feral one, biting into Blurr's neck, driving with abandon into the valve until Blurr gave a loud sound, his body jerking, spasming against Drift's, his valve clenching down on the spike as it spilled its fluid in a hot rush.

Drift held him there, hips held up, shoved roughly against Blurr's, for a long moment before he sagged down, his hands loosening their grip. Blurr rode the release easily, lifting his head gently from Drift's savage mouth.

“Fiery thing,” he said, squeezing his valve against the spike, just to watch Drift quiver. His own smile was loose and happy and sated. He pushed back with regret, lifting his weight off Drift, his valve, tenderly, off the silver spike, sliding slowly upward, giving one last squeeze before letting the head pop from his valve, the silver fluid dribbling down Drift's spike. “Next time,” he said, drawing a line up the transfluid coated spike with one finger, before showily licking it, letting his optics go glazed, “maybe some place more private.”

Drift nodded, slowly, somehow stuck in a haze of disbelief, his systems throbbing with pleasure.

Blurr disentangled his legs, running one hand over Drift's hip, exploring, possessive. “Just to let you know, my turn next time.” He pushed to his feet, snapping his covers closed, grinning down at Drift like a prize.

 

[***]

Drift stood by the CR chamber. Perceptor, the one he'd saved, hung in the effervescing blue liquid. He had no idea why he'd come here, what had driven him to seek out the humming, beeping veil of sound of the repair bay. Maybe, he thought, to look at the first life he'd ever saved. The first pure save, with his own hands, his own swords. This, he thought, is mine. This is my redemption. Or the start of it. My second chance.

Perceptor hung, floated, drifted, mute, blind, helpless in the blue liquid. Drift forced himself to look at the damage, the ruptured chassis, the ruined optic. The gaping maw of the chassis looked almost too much like Wing's damage for him not to make some intuitive, strange connection.

He laid a palm on the plasglass, as if to touch this symbol of his redemption, his first stone on his new path. “Perceptor,” he said, tasting the name. His optics traveled over the red armor, the black helm. Nothing like the dull, drab colors of the Decepticons. Kup had told him that Perceptor wasn't one they'd usually take on this kind of mission. “You did well,” he murmured. War didn't discriminate. War didn't care. Only mechs did, and they only so long before it ground them down to nothing. And Perceptor had fought, even out of his league. That was worth saving, right there.

But they'd left him. It wasn't right. Wing had spoken the truth. He'd said it to Turmoil, and felt it echo as true now—that the Autobots had fallen from whatever ideal they might have held.

“They gave me your quarters,” he said. “It isn't right.” It wasn't. “I'm out of place here. Should probably go.” The CR chamber made its usual bleeps and hum as its only response. “I...don't know how to do this.” He wasn't even sure what he meant—how to be an Autobot. How to fit in. Pit, here he was, talking to a tube of goo. His reflection, distorted from the glassine surface, still looked, to him, too much like Deadlock, his worried smile thrown back at him twisted into some kind of sneer.

He moved back to a small table, resting his hip on its cool surface, tilting his head up to look at the blank-opticked face. It seemed only decent, even though there was no way Perceptor could see. Or hear. This was...the safest confidence he could imagine.

“One of your teammates. And I. Last night.” He couldn't even really say the words, articulate what it meant. He didn't even know what it meant. He stopped, started again. “Before. Where I got this armor that you recognized,” and he hated the questions that would inevitably come from that notice, “there was...someone else. His name was Wing, and he was...,” Drift dropped his gaze to stare at his hands. “Everything. He turned everything I knew, thought I knew, upside down. All the rules of how I thought the world worked...,” His palms spread in surrender. “I got too close. He died. I....” His hand reached up, brushing the handle of the Great Sword gently, another secret he'd only admit to the beeping dumb machine. “Never going to get that close again.” Dangerous. He'd always told Wing that, always known. He just hadn't realized how much it could hurt and he still live.

“Blurr is...not that. Not again. Never.” He couldn't do that again, wouldn't survive it. But Deadlock had had his...releases. No emotion. No attachment. That he could do. The old ways. Safe. “But it's something. And...someone wanted me. Wanted...me.” It rang a little hollow even as he said it. Blurr didn't know him. At all. Blurr just saw the exterior; it wasn't Drift he really wanted, it was the exotic armor of New Crystal City. But still. It didn't matter.

It didn't. He refused.

He looked up at the CR chamber again, at a loss. What had he hoped to find here? Find anywhere? Still, it felt like some release of pressure just to say the words. Just to make them real, the way Wing had said that oaths and promises did. “Thanks for listening.” Drift's mouth quirked into a lopsided smile. Something else he was working on.

[***]

Drift snarled in frustration as Blurr jerked his spike out of Drift's valve just before the critical threshold of charge was reached, the reverse friction giving the blue mech a fast, hard overload, transfluid spurting from his spike over Drift's belly.

Blurr grinned, bending over to plant a hard kiss on Drift's mouth. “You're too hot to let you go this soon, Drift.” Nothing but the truth, Blurr thought, devouring the spectacle of his silver fluid spattered over the beautiful frame. Marked. His. And Drift's wanton writhing...also his.

He rose on his knees, digging one hand under Drift's hip. “Over,” he said. Drift resisted the thought, but a quick circle of his aching, wanting valve with one hand convinced him. He flopped, begrudgingly, onto his belly, to find his hips jerked up and back, Blurr still on his knees, sinking his spike in the valve again with the ease of long practice that even time had not dulled. Blurr's fingers curled over the scabbards for leverage.

Blurr took a moment to take in the view: the broad, white shoulders, the naked attachment for the big sword, now laying off to one side, the helm twisting from side to side, Drift trying to catch a glimpse of him. He felt the valve, charge diminishing, squeezing down along his spike. Oh this one was eager, better than half the mechs who'd thrown themselves at him at the height of his career.

Blurr reached, hooking one hand over an attachment point for the sword, jerking back on it like a rein or bit, yanking Drift's body back against his, pushing his pelvic span forward. And again. And then again, hard, solid thrusts. Drift shuddered beneath him, around him, hands clawing at the berth, driven by raw lust. Blurr felt his own overload charge build again, too fast, too readily, the intoxicating sight of the shuddering body given over to his sharp thrusts driving him beyond his restraint.

He barely managed to pull out in time, feeling Drift's valve start to ripple with the first eddies of overload. He'd wanted to stay inside, to feel that work around him. But he managed, spilling his fluid over the white aft plating, the black torso armor, like hot rain.

Drift, infuriated, frustrated, whirled, one elbow nearly clipping Blurr on the head. Blurr laughed. Feisty one. His favorite kind, because when they overloaded, when he finally let them, they came hard. He let Drift's motion sail past him, spinning to straddle the torso, letting his weight flatten the chassis to the berth before bending over, closing his mouth around the spike's head.

The body beneath him jolted. Blurr laughed, his mouth still closed around the spike, rolling over it with his glossa. Drift sucked in a sharp, almost hissing vent behind him. And Blurr had an idea. He reached over, tugging one of the short swords from the hip scabbard, distracting Drift by letting his mouth slide down the spike. He felt the hips surge up against him, pushing the spike at his mouth. So easily led, these mechs, Blurr thought. So eager. He got off on the power, the ability to bend them to his will, more than the physical contact.

For example. He shifted his own hips back, his feet bumping for a klik awkwardly against the shoulders to bring his spike hovering over Drift's mouth. Who...took the hint, if awkwardly. He hadn't had much practice, apparently, the mouth that closed on Blurr's spike hesitant, the glossa poking rather than knowledgeable. Which was its own kind of hotness, really, Blurr thought, that he had a novice. Technique was its own aphrodisiac, but sometimes, no technique at all stood in for something just as arousing. And besides, this was merely a distraction for...this:

The cold metal of the sword hilt sliding into the overworked valve. He felt the body beneath him go rigid, could hear the valve's calipers flutter in response to the intrusion. And the sight of it—he sank the handle up to the crossguard and...oh, frag. That was almost too much. His mouth began working the spike again, his optics never leaving the sword—or the blade jutting from it, which twisted and rocked to its own tempo.

Hands closed over his hips, fingertips hard and gripping against his thin armor, as he began rocking those same hips, sliding his spike smoothly in and out of Drift's amateur mouth. Frag, he wanted to see that, too, that white helm between his thighs, that mouth a blissful 'o' around his spike. Later. Another time. Right now, this was too much to enjoy, the twitches and twinges of the hips under him, the spike eager, almost leaping into his mouth, and the sword. Just the thought of it, a cold, inflexible bar in the valve, was enough to send a tremor of its own over his net.

Now, he wanted it now. Wanted to feel Drift's overload, watch him writhe, taste the charge in his transfluid.

He buckled down to his work, glossa flicking expertly at the nodes on the spike, building charge, building intensity, sucking and releasing tension on the sensitive nodes, until the hips beneath him leapt upward, his mouth flooding with the sweet oily taste of transfluid from a long-delayed overload, the sword twitching and jumping as the valve clamped down on the hilt. Hard hands clawed at his hips, His own overload was almost an afterthought, a simple release of fluid, that inexpert Drift swallowed only clumsily.

He flicked his glossa over the spike, feeling the hypersensitized nodes prickle against him, Drift half-yelping beneath him, his ventilations sharp and short and desperate. He finally let go, sliding his mouth up the spike,holding the tip in the circle of his lip plates before popping his mouth off. Drift gasped.

Blurr sat up, shifting his weight to come to a rest on one hip beside the trembling, prone white mech. “You,” he said, “are fraggin' exquisite.” He laughed at his own pun, the taste of the transfluid on his glossa. He reached to withdraw the sword, laughing at Drift's embarrassed arousal.

Drift said nothing, shaking his head as if that was some sort of answer, his body shaking, hands unsteady. His torso was still splattered with Blurr's fluid—an abstract silver spatter pattern. Marked. Blurr's. Blurr purred at the sight, at the thought of Drift having to walk down the hallway to his own quarters. Someone catching him, maybe, wearing the so-obvious marks of interfacing. Yes.

Blurr's gaze dropped to his own hips, his spike, sleek and clean, one silver droplet shimmering from the tip. And then...the dents on his hips. Dents, where two strong black hands had grabbed him, clutched into him. His smile, his humor, faded.

“Get out,” he snapped.

Drift's face shifted from post-coital languor to confusion. “What?”

Blurr rubbed at one panel as if he could wipe the dents away. “Out! Now.”

Drift propped up on one elbow, optics still bleary from the overload. “What did I do?”

“This!” Blurr pointed. “You don't mark me. You don't damage me. Do you know who I am?”

Drift's optics cleared, their light going cold and hard. “No,” he said, in a voice that matched the optics perfectly. “I don't.” He rolled off the berth, snatching at his swords, and left, without even one backward glance.

  



	2. Speed and Status ch 2

_**Speed and Status ch 2**_  
R  
IDW  
Drift, Perceptor, Springer, refs Drift/Blurr  
ref'd sticky   
follows[ this.](http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_vector/103643.html)

 

If Perceptor could have seen, or heard, anything from his suspension in the tank of energon-rich sterile fluid, he would have seen a white mech storm into the repair facility, his armor almost hazy-bright in the darkness, spattered with silver on his abdomen, on his back plating, down his dark thighs.

Drift was glad Perceptor couldn't see or hear, as he tore open the cabinets, searching, snarling, until he found what he was looking for: a decon brush. After propping his Great Sword against the wall, he slammed the cleanser tap on in the room's small, emegency decon stall, and stood, for a long moment, under the spray, brush slack in his hand, letting the warm cleanser rain down over him. He tilted his head up into the spray, trying to let his anger sheet off him along with Blurr's transfluid. Humiliation and anger warred within him.

He hadn't expected much from the whole thing with Blurr. Simple mutual gratification. Physical lust. Nothing more. But he couldn't deal with...Blurr. That attitude. As though he'd left the track behind, but kept all of the entitlement and ego.

And for his part, Drift envied him both. What ego he'd had had been rooted in violence, his ability to kill, and Wing...had made him doubt all that. Even though Wing killed, it had had a different quality to it, and Wing had taken no pride from it.

Drift growled, and seized the brush, beginning to scrape it over his smudged, stained armor. It had been all right at the time; frustrating as the Pit, but he'd understood that want to control, to rile and refuse.

But now...it was a stain, marking him.

The cleanser stung into the rough scraping he made with the brush over his belly. He swiped less effectively at his back, knowing there was no way he could reach it all, tilting forward, palms on the wall to hold his torso at an angle, hoping the cleanser's fall would get rid of the worst of it. At least enough that it told no tales.

Drift was no one's.

He let the cleanser sheet over his sides, down his legs, feeling it warm against his thighs, down his shins. Another time he might have admitted it felt good. Another time, he might have enjoyed it. Not now.

He flicked open his interface hatch, scrubbing furiously with the brush, hissing at the crossing of the boundary of pain as he savaged his equipment. Needed, wanted, to erase all trace of Blurr on him, every shred of pleasure.

He kicked off the tap, standing still, letting the cleanser falling off his frame diminish from a rain of droplets to a few random drips, the cleanser cooling, nearly chilling his armor. His optics caught Perceptor's frame, hanging in the tank.

“Sorry,” he said, stepping out of the small stall. “Just...can't take your teammate.” He wondered what Perceptor thought of Blurr, if they were friends. Or more. Another stupid Autobot thing.

He gave a wry smile. Like he expected an answer. He grabbed a cleansing rag, swiping it down his armor, pausing, and then, almost shyly, half-turned to dry off his equipment, swabbing down the spike, around the valve.

He sighed, snapping the covers shut, wavering for a moment. Return to his quarters? No. Blurr might look for him there. And it still felt wrong to be surrounded by another mech's things, like he was a ghost animating a corpse he didn't even recognize. Like they were trying to jam him into some box into which he wasn't sure he could fit.

Frag. Drift grabbed his Great Sword, looked around the room with a sigh of frustration, before flopping, on the ground, wedging himself between the regen tank and the bank of monitors. Comfortable pressure on his shoulders, a space that back in the gutters of Iacon he would have found an excellent hideyhole. Strange the comfort we find in our familiar fears.

He cradled the Great Sword, resting his cheek against the cool metal of the blade, the hum of the regen systems filling the room, lulling him like a surf of white noise. Not to recharge, not yet, but soothing the tops of his anger, his discontent less sharp-edged. He snorted at himself, optics drifting up to the tank's contents, Perceptor's body hanging, immobile, infinitely patient.

“Thanks for letting me crash here,” he said, feeling ridiculous, but too spun up to sleep. “Just...yeah.”

He stroked the sword. “Used to recharge like this all the time.” He dropped his gaze. “Grew up in the gutters. Not...one of you shiny pretty Autobots. Think it shows.” He sighed. “What was I thinking? This...isn't going to work. Not a team player.” He gave a bitter laugh at memory. No. Deadlock had not been much for collaboration. Or foresight.

His fingers stroked down the sword, almost reverently. Wing's sword. So heavy with Wing and all the white jet had stood for that sometimes it felt unliftable, but a burden he'd never want to put down. It was what Turmoil had always said—he needed some control, some central force. He'd found one.

He looked up at the blue tank, Perceptor's red lower-leg. “Ever see something you'd always dreamed of? I mean, all your life. From that part of you that's so deep it almost...tears at your spark? Something you'd convinced yourself couldn't really exist? Because it was easier to believe it was impossible than...that it was real and you couldn't have it?”

“And...Wing.” Even saying the name hurt, but he forced himself to, to taste the pain of it, make sure it still hurt. It was a pain that should hurt...forever. What he had ruined, thrown away, before he knew better. “Probably going to sound stupid. Don't think he was perfect,” it felt like a betrayal. Right now, his death still such a gaping crater in Drift's mind, Wing was perfect. Forever and always. “But he wanted me. Me. Not my rank, or reputation. Me. I'd...,” he shivered, suddenly, as if cold, wrapping his arms childishly around the sword, not caring how stupid it looked or he sounded. Perceptor couldn't hear him anyway. Just...talking to himself, really. Out loud. Just to get perspective. Explain what the frag had just happened with Blurr. “Never happened like that before. Me. Wanting _me,_ you know?” Blurr hadn't wanted him. Just...the newness, the foreign. He'd thought at first that's what Wing had wanted but..no. There'd been plenty of time for that polish to wear off, and...nothing like what had happened just now.

Blurr. Frag you, racer.

He leaned into the tank's base, as if to take some mute comfort from the steady vibration. “Don't know what he saw in me. Still don't.” Never will. “But he wasn't stupid. He saw...something.” A half-hearted shrug. “Who knows,” he murmured, resting his helm against the cool humming metal, “maybe one day I'll see it myself.”

 

[***]

 

The part of leadership Springer really hated was this: onboard, in transit, when all of the boredom built up into petty squabbles. And petty squabbles among the Wreckers tended to involve high caliber weaponry. Or equally atomic emotions. Yeah, Wreckers and 'maturity' were...not synonymous. Kind of like matter and antimatter.

And Blurr? Just made everything happen...faster. Great.

Still, he had to check it out, because, yeah, to be honest? He wasn't so keen on this new guy, himself. Kup had a tendency to pick up strays—like Perceptor—without really seeing them clearly. Anyone who had an interesting story—what a sucker Kup was for stories!

So the new guy, apparently, overnighted in the repair bay. Not cool.

Springer opened the door. It took a moment to find, but sure enough—the white sweep of Drift's ankle armor, the strange, almost pointed, black toe plates,jutting out from behind the tank. What...the...?

“Hey,” Springer barked.

A hiss, and a flash of metal, the feet withdrawing into a feral crouch. “What.” A surly truculence, the tone Springer knew too well—he used it himself when he'd been caught out at something.

“What the frag you doing back there?” Springer planted his hands on his hips as Drift pulled his way to his feet, stowing his sword, clutching the larger sword's sheath.

“Nothng.”

Springer glared.

Drift's optics kept sliding to the floor. Hiding something. “Recharging.”

Right. “Something wrong with the quarters we assigned you?” An edge to his voice.

“No. Just...not....” Drift looked down at the large sword in his hands, then slung it, in a smooth, practiced move, between his shoulders.

“Not...what?”

“Never mind.” Drift moved to push past Springer.

Springer stopped him with a hand on the red ring of his wrist, twisting until the white mech's optics met his. “Going somewhere, Drift?”

“To my quarters.”

Springer's optics narrowed. “You might consider staying there. Where we can find you.” He thrust the other's wrist away, turning to examine the nook Drift had been in, checking for damage, sabotage. He felt Drift's hot glare on him. Go ahead, neutral, he thought. Notice we're suspicious. Not all of us are as trusting as Kup.

 

 

  



	3. Speed and Status ch 3

_**Speed and Status ch 3**_  
NC-17  
IDW  
Drift, Blurr, Perceptor, random Wreckers  
sticky, and Blurr is Spotlight: Blurr oh and part of this might be familiar as a bit I'd written for [](http://tf-speedwriting.livejournal.com/profile)[**tf_speedwriting**](http://tf-speedwriting.livejournal.com/)   months ago.

Perceptor pushed himself off the repair berth. “I'm fine,” he said, pitching his voice low. Springer and Topspin stepped back, half-alarmed, half-relieved. Truth was, he was the closest thing they had to a medic. Repairs done on him were rote, by the book, plop in a tank and hit the green button.

“You sure?”

Perceptor nodded. A host of words boiled up in his vocalizer, but he pushed them back with the memory: searing agony, Turmoil's derision burning into him, over top, even, of the sharp guilt-edged pain that he, he had been the one to betray their location, compromise their mission. Amateurs. He, with his running mouth. Never again.

Never again.

He'd hung in that tank...for how long? His chrono was off. Too long. Uselessly long. Floating, swimming in memories. Strange armor. Hard shock of pain. A rifle muzzle, point blank over his right optic. Someone running toward him, blown back. And then...nothing, the battle raging away from him, even the enemy finding him beneath the effort of finishing off. Abandoned, discarded, bleeding out in the darkness.

And then, a flash of white in the darkness, blue optics glowing down from a white helm, strong hands cradling his broken frame, gentle but sure, the feel of alien armor against his back, the bald, gaping hole in his chassis spilling fluid and spark against the pure white.

His own team had abandoned him; but the strange mech came for him. He'd hung for...days in that tank, chewing that over. His own team, his Wreckers, Kup, had fended for themselves, taken their freed captives, but forgotten Perceptor. Beneath notice, even his pain. Possibly, probably, deliberately. If he'd kept quiet then....It was his fault. It was his punishment.

He looked back over his shoulder, Topspin's anxiety, Springer's relief—as if he'd dreaded some sodden torrential outburst. No, Perceptor thought. Not from me. Not again. “Fine,” he repeated. He reached for a scanner, running it over his medical tell-node, then honing it on the systems, one by one. He'd find his weaknesses, one by one, and eradicate them. Ruthlessly.

“You...feelin' all right, Perceptor?” Topspin asked, cautious, amending hastily, “You know, for someone who's just come out of regen?”

“Yes,” Perceptor said, and felt, they all felt, the expectant silence, waiting for his usual deluge of words, and then the awkwardness from Topspin and Springer when it never came. Almost as if shaking their belief that they ever really knew him.

The feeling was mutual.

[***]

Perceptor still hadn't figured the solution, but even he, occasionally, recognized there was a time for rest. His hands were trembling from overwork, his cortex fuzzy from lack of fuel. He needed a break.

He had some strange, nibbling sensation in his cortex, that he wrote off as lack of fuel and exhaustion, as he walked down the corridor. As if something would be...different there.

No. Nothing was different except him. What was bothering him was probably the strange sense that so much had changed, inside, but so little outside. As if he were seeing through a new visual processor array. He'd thought he'd fit in here. He'd thought the Wreckers were his friends—or the closest he'd had to friends. Disillusion, he thought. That's what you're feeling.

He keyed the door code, and had stepped into the room before the white mass on his berth registered. The strange mech. The one Turmoil had called Deadlock. The one who had come back for him.

Perceptor froze, blinked his optics, sure it was some...hallucination. But the mech was still there when he opened them again, and even after he ran a quick visual feed check.

He stepped closer, and suddenly there was a flash of silver, and a blade sprang up between them, vicious and sharp and aiming at his throat, blue optics blazing above it.

The sword disappeared just as suddenly, whispering home into a sheath. “Perceptor,” the voice said, and it rippled with memory through Perceptor's cortex. “Sorry. They...told me to stay here.” He pushed to his feet, awkwardly in the small space. “I'll go...somewhere.”

“No,” Perceptor said. “Stay.” His exhaustion lined his face. “Work it out in the morning.”

The white mech stepped back as Perceptor edged to the berth. It struck Perceptor: the berth was not that big. Two could recharge on it if they were...intimate.

“I'll take the floor,” he said, quietly.

The white mech shook his head. “No.” He dropped to the floor, swiftly, almost defiantly, making the decision for them. “I'll take the floor.”

Perceptor was too tired to argue, the berth looking too welcoming. And, as he lay himself down on it, horizontal for the first time, he felt the warmth from the other mech's systems radiating from the berth against him. It felt...strangely comforting and unnerving at the same time. He looked over at the white mech, who was leaning against the wall beside the berth, cradling the large sword between his knees. “You can't be comfortable.”

He kept his face in profile, some attempt to give Perceptor privacy, perhaps. The visible side of his mouth quirked. “Recharged like this plenty of times. Be fine.”

Perceptor found his optics roaming, strut-weary as he was, over the alien lines of the helm, down to the hands—the hands that had picked him up from that stained floor, the hands that saved him. “I..never thanked you.”

  
“Huh?” The mech turned, and his face, for a moment, was open, surprised; not the tight mask of before.

“For saving me. Thank you.”

A moment of silence, that grew awkward, like spines. Perceptor ducked his head. “I'm sorry,” he murmured.

“Sorry...for thanking me?” A hint of something like humor. Something no one used around Perceptor. To Perceptor. And his awkwardness crested, and then washed away, a wan smile spreading over his face.

“Tired,” he said.

The other mech nodded, and Perceptor lifted his head to see a grin, honest and real. “Get some recharge.”

He dropped back down to his back, obedient, something burning under his chestplates, warm and fierce and sudden. “Rest well, Deadlock,” he whispered.

He didn't see the darkness cross the face, obliterating the smile, dimming the blue optics.

[***]

  
How had he done this again? He’d sworn he wasn’t going to go back to the narcissistic blue racer but…here he was. So much for swears. So much for common sense. So much for self-control.

Deadlock. He wasn't Deadlock. That wasn't who he was, who he wanted to be.

Just a mistake. A slip. Or, as Drift thought about it, only sense. Perceptor hadn't been functional when he'd given his name. He'd only heard Turmoil call out Deadlock, recognizing the voice.

Recognizing the voice. His voice unchanged. How much else also?

Drift really wasn’t up to thinking about that right now, his spike pounding into Blurr’s slick valve: heat and pressure and friction in all the right ways. He growled at the rising overload, forcing it back, wanting to draw this out. Blurr, on his hands and knees, whimpered softly, his optics fixed on the mirror he’d set up, watching himself, watching Drift behind him, Drift’s hands on his hip armor, the rhythmic rocking of Drift’s scabbards, like waving white flags. Surrendering, in a sense. Drift? No. Deadlock. Or some vertiginous space between.

“Faster!” Blurr swiveled his hips, impatient. “Faster!”

Drift curled his hands farther forward around the hips, keeping his fingers flat, trying not to dig in, though what he wanted—really wanted—to do was squeeze his fingers into the armor until it squealed, until Blurr cried out, twitching, pain and pleasure swirling together. He changed his thrusts—sharper, shallower, shorter, his vents coming in sharp pants, his spike tingling, wanting, wanting. He didn’t look at the mirror, instead focusing his optics on the sweeps and curves of Blurr’s armor, before closing them off entirely, shutting off vision to concentrate on speed and rhythm, the sharp clench of the valve against his spike, lubricant slicking from the valve over his spike’s housing, hot and thin and wet.

He slowed, three deep, long thrusts, nearly the entire length of his spike, giving some guttural snarl at the third one, jamming his spike deep, unable to hold off the overload any longer. His transfluid slammed against Blurr’s ceiling node like a blow, the blue mech shuddering, valve grasping, greedy.

Drift spread his fingers again, a reminder to both of them that he hadn’t damaged Blurr’s frame, his shoulders releasing tension. This was good. This was what he could deal with—using each other, body and system seeking physical release. No commitment. No attachment. No emotions. Just hard, fast, demanding interfacing. Impersonal.

Drift inched back, but Blurr caught his spike with his valve, running the tension calipers in a rolling wave up the spike. Drift shuddered, his spike twitching at the contact, charge prickling over it, another spurt of transfluid milked from his channel. Blurr gave a purring laugh. “Like that, huh?”

Drift swept a hand over his face, his body quivering. “Yeah,” he managed. He braced himself, one hand on Blurr’s aft, withdrawing his spike slowly, letting the silver transfluid dribble down Blurr’s thighs, his spike. Blurr dropped his hips to one side, turning.

“Should have stayed in. Could get you going again,” Blurr purred.

No. The hardest edge was off Drift’s lust, and the controlling gleam in Blurr’s optics dampened his desires.He'd wanted to punish. Blurr. Himself. The edge was off, the sharp sting of humiliation, of what he'd lowered himself to, strong enough to last. “Maybe next time.”

Blurr pouted. “Maybe next time we can see if I can get you off that way.”

Drift dropped back onto his heels, stowing his spike. “Can. Knew a mech—“ he cut himself short.

Blurr cocked his head. “Knew a mech…?”

Drift frowned. Didn’t want to seem like he had a secret. Not to Blurr. Not that he trusted the blue mech: kind of the opposite. If Blurr had something on Drift, he’d try to use it. He shrugged. Keep names out of it, he told himself. Make it sound anonymous. Just sex. Just fucking. “Yeah. Straddled me. And just,” he made a vague gesture with his hands. “Took a cycle but…,” he shivered with the memory: Wing, motionless over him, immobile save for the delicate pulling, probing, of his valve’s caliper mechanisms on Drift’s spike. “Intense.” He’d screamed his vocalizer raw at the sudden, hard release, like a wall bursting before a flood of water.

Blurr looked at him expectantly, his gaze flicking down to the closed interface hatch. Well, might as well tell him the rest. Put him in his place, right?

Drift snorted. “Then again. And…another time. Six, I think, before he slipped.” He’d…not really been keeping count, thrashing wildly, helpless, enthralled, Wing beaming down at him like a radiant sun, feeding on his release.

“Slipped.” Despite himself, intrigued. Huh. Something you never heard of, Mr Mech of the World?

Drift’s grin took a sly edge and he felt a surge of remembered emotion for Wing, his casual kinkiness, as if perversion, shame, judgment…simply didn’t exist in his world. Drift leaned forward, one hand on the berth next to Blurr’s shoulder, his voice husky and close.  
“He got off on the pressure. Having so much fluid, held in his valve, or something. He was just…rolling on some kind of ecstasy and then,” his grin was edged, slicing into Blurr's presumption that he knew everything, “lost control. All that fluid, pressure.” His body twitched, remembering in a deeper way than his cortex. “So very wet,” he whispered.

He hid his smirk at Blurr’s aroused shock, rolling off the berth, out of reach. “Should try it sometime,” he said, knowing Blurr would never have the patience, and that he didn't want that long intimacy with anyone else, reaching for his Great Sword, not even caring if the triumph was evident in his gaze as he turned to leave. So much he’d learned from Wing: only one of which was the white jet’s absolute refusal to shame. Nothing was illicit, nothing was shameful if the other mech wanted it, too; if it brought pleasure. Sex about pleasure, not power…or rather sex about the power of bringing another pleasure.

Where had that gone? Already, he'd lost it, the way a dream slowly burns off upon waking.

He ached to have that again, as much as he yearned, at night for the city he’d walked away from, New Crystal City, what he’d always wanted.

It was something from the past, a jewel he could take out and admire, pure and bright. He refused to let the fact that it was in the past, that he’d never have anything like that again, taint the memory of what it had been. It had been beautiful, transcendent. It blazed through his memory, his body, brighter than a sun. Against which these…make-do releases were merely that—releases of pressure, de-stressing a gauge. It could be nothing more. And he deserved no better.

  



	4. Speed and Status 4

_  
**Speed and Status 4**   
_

R  
IDW  
Blurr, Drift, Perceptor, Springer  
ref sticky, vulgarity

What Blurr does in section three is pretty much drawn from real life.  
  
 

 

The white mech was gone when Perceptor awoke—and Perceptor began to wonder if he'd ever been there at all or if the whole thing—the gentle laugh, the awkward courtesies—had been just a fantasy illusion.He lay on the berth, still joors before he could justify moving, floating somewhere between recharge and awake, systems fluctuatingly functional, so that reality was fuzzy and blurry and swirled like an image painted on water.

He shifted, restlessly, words and images coming to him in disconnected snatches: the white mech, scrubbing fiercely at his interface equpment, the same baritone voice, murmuring beside him, soft, breathing questions, names, regrets, and above all...a strange loneliness.

The door opened, whooshing nearly silently, and the white mech stepped through, moving lightly on his feet, almost soundlessly. He froze, catching Perceptor's gaze.

“Thought you'd still be recharging,” he murmured.

Perceptor scooted to the edge of the berth. “Please,” he said, pointing at the metal surface, awash with guilt. “You didn't have to leave.”

“Had to.” The other mech shifted, uncomfortable, as if torn between defiance and confession. “Had to get something out of my system.”

A flash of...something across Perceptor's cortex. Memory, half-memory.He shook his head. Some...aftereffect of the tank, perhaps.“Please.Recharge here? I'll take the floor.”

The other mech frowned, confused, but stepped forward. “Look. You don't have to--”

“Please, Deadlock.”

A flinch, as though Perceptor had struck the other mech. “Drift. The name's Drift. Deadlock's...not who I am.”

Something there, some mystery.Perceptor nodded. “Forgive my mistake. I misheard.” Or misremembered.

Drift seated himself, gingerly, on the berth, his scabbards sliding behind him. “Just...long story.” His shoulder panels shifted, high, tense, enough so that even Perceptor read that he didn't want to talk about it.

“Drift,” Perceptor said. An apology, and an acknowledgement. He moved to one side, clearing more room, catching, suddenly,the unmistakable scent of heated transfluid.

Oh.

For some reason, the realization stabbed at him, quicker and surer than Drift's blades ever could.

 

[***]

 

“Right,” Springer said, calling up the next mission. “As usual, a real ugly mission.”

“Matches Kup's face,” Twin Twist cracked.It wasn't, Drift thought at the tinny laughter that bubbled around him, particularly funny, but it was one of those things, one of those dull, expected rituals in combat teams.So, he was part of this team—he forced a dry chuckle.

Springer waited, an equally insincere but tolerant smile on his face.“We're still waiting on Met, but topographic assessment says this'll be a real...adventure.”He clicked the display and a satellite image of chewed up, uneven ground, split into ragged cliffs and sharp gaps that couldn't really be called 'valleys' popped up.“Lots of cover and concealment.” He gave a wry grin. “That's for the enemy, of course. But it wouldn't kill some of you to, you know, dodge every now and again.” Another round of the familiar not-really-laughter.

Blurr nudged Drift's thigh. “You get used to it,” he said, sympathetically.

“Am used to it,” Drift murmured. Just...not on this side. And not sitting in the audience, either.He knew from experience there was something Springer was keeping back about the mission. Something the bullet-meat didn't really need to trouble their stupid cortices about.

Blurr gave him a smile as though it were a gift. “Looking forward to seeing you in action.”

Drift was looking forward to it, too. Something to do.That he could actually do well.His hands tingled, wanting weapons.Gun, Sword. It didn't mattter.He wanted to be doing, not just...listening.“Me too,” he said.

Blurr took it as referring to, well, Blurr. “Heh,” he said. “I'm so fast you probably won't even see me.”

Drift managed—he hoped—a convincingly friendly return smile.

Springer was droning on about the topography, before switching to the actual important stuff: who they were up against. “Small unit of Decepticons.”

Topspin made an unhappy sound, as if disappointed. “Small.”

Springer pursed his mouth plates. “Small but troublesome enough that we got called in.” The mouth resolved into a grin. “Don't worry; plenty of action.”

“What are they, like Squadron X all over again?”

Springer shifted, the smile dying. It took a moment before he responded, as though he was trying to force his initial response back in some dark, nasty hole.“Wannabes, at best. The main concern—or the fun part, if you're Twin Twist—is that they're more or less sitting on a ton of demo.”

“Why they haven't blown them from orbit.”Perceptor's voice, from the back of the room.Drift found himself turning to look.After so long seeing him in the regen tank, it was still a little...weird seeing him whole, moving.

Springer nodded.“It's a small asteroid, rich with polybdenum. Which is...,” he looked back at Perceptor, tagging out.

Perceptor took one step forward. “Rare, volatile chemical.Required for interstellar transwarp drives. Ifstruck by sufficient concussive force, it releases destabilizing tachyon energy.”He clamped his mouth shut, abruptly.

“In, uh, actual language?”

“Rip a hole in space,” Drift said.He felt the whole room—a mass of blue optics—turn to him.His shoulders shifted.

“You...do science?”Twin Twist looked a little impressed.

“No. Just...have some experience on ships with those kind of drives.”His least favorite part of space-combat—sitting around, helplessly, in a giant metal bomb in space, praying the enemy misses.

“Yeah,” Springer said, “Basically. So, bad thing for it to blow. And, apparently we—our side—needs the polybdenum.”

“And deny the asset to the enemy.” It felt...strange to refer to Decepticons as enemies.Then again, he hadn't had that many 'friends'.

“This sounds like it requires delicacy,” Topspin said. “Not exactly our dish.”

“Not delicacy, per se,” Springer said. “Just...small caliber weaponry.”

“A challenge,” Kup piped up. “Kind of reminds me of the time on Furzif-4.”

“It can remind you,” Springer said, tightly, “later.”

Kup glared. “Useful information.” He turned to the rest of the group. “So, no slag, there we were....”

A blue hand descended on Drift's wrist.“Let's blow this,” Blurr said.“Once Kup starts, it means all the actual important info's out.”

Drift hesitated. Kup had been decent to him—more than.Had figured out his secret, and given him a chance.Trusted him. Surely that deserved some show of loyalty. He twisted his wrist from Blurr's grasp. “I should stay.”

Blurr pouted, partly playfully. “Come on. We could get in a quick one before battle.”

Drift frowned.“Not right now.” Not really in the mood.Though after battle...?Drift had a feeling Blurr might be up for some venting of post-combat energy. Primus knew he normally was.

Blurr slid one hand around Drift's waist, fingers flirting with the Great Sword's sheath.“It won't take long...,” he whispered, leaning in.

“He said he wasn't interested,” Perceptor's voice, right behind them. Blurr jumped; Drift's head snapped around.The blue optics blazed down at Blurr from under the black helm, arms ending in tight fists

“Don't need your help,” Drift said, nettled. Perceptor didn't meet his gaze, optics locked with Blurr's.

“Problem?” Springer's voice cut through the tension like slicing through over-stretched strings.

“No,” Blurr said, recovering fastest.“Just helping out the new guy,” Blurr gave a stellar grin, the kind, Drift realized, he'd probably flashed before a thousand cameras—slick, practiced.Part of him envied that easy assurance: compared to himself, second guessing everything he did and said, knowing he was under constant scrutiny, Blurr's easy confidence gleamed like a star.

And part of him wondered if Blurr were capable of honest emotion.His optics flicked up to Perceptor, on whose face indignation and antagonism were writ large enough for Drift to read. There was an honesty there, he realized, something he could respect.Perceptor met his gaze, before his optics dropped, his face falling into a sheepish sort of discontent.Yes.Honesty.

 

[***]

  
Blurr's laugh cut through the buzz and bustle of the rec room.Perceptor looked up from his datapad.He'd always hung out, hung back, here, in the corner, where he could watch the Wreckers and their easy conviviality. Partly, he rationalized, because they might need help: he'd broken up more than one fight, and tended to more than one bruised ego.But mostly, he knew, to pretend to belong.

Their hijinks had never bothered him before, but Blurr's raucous laughter, as he curled one arm around Drift's, set Perceptor's dentae on edge.He looked down at his datapad, where he'd laid out schematics for his new chestplate, trying to bury himself back in his work. Not my business, he told himself.Not my concern.Drift told me he didn't need my 'help.'

But his optics kept drifting up and over to the pair, the way Blurr leaned into Drift, the small ways Drift seemed to be, slowly, squirming away.

No. Not your concern.Drift had come back from the battle, dented, damaged, and had gone to their quarters just long enough to wash the worst of the char and stink and stain off, before moving, silently, out the door.

Perceptor had said nothing, lying awake, trying not to count the cycles, trying to think of what he could say when Drift returned, before recharge finally pulled him into its dark arms.When he awoke, Drift was there, seated on the floor by the berth, as though guarding it, head bowed.As if he'd been there all night.

Perceptor wondered why Drift hadn't asked for new quarters.Even on the nights when he didn't go to...Blurr, Drift recharged on the floor, but he seemed...strangely accepting of it.

Not your concern.

Blurr laughed, leaning over the white spaulder.“Come on,” he said.“You know you want it.”

Perceptor couldn't see Drift's face, only the back of his helm, but he did see the sudden stiffness, the slight tilt of the helm away. If Drift said anything, it got lost in the swirl of noise.

Perceptor caught Blurr's profiled pout.He slumped back against the couch, arms folded. Waiting for Drift to respond, Perceptor thought.Drift rolled forward, reaching for a cube of energon on the low table.His helm never turned.Good, Perceptor thought. And then realized...he was siding against someone on his own team.He should want Blurr to be happy, and Drift too.

No, he did want that.He just didn't see it here.

Drift took a long, slow drink of his cube.Blurr shifted forward, reaching for the cube in Drift's hand.“You don't mind, do you?” Blurr's smile was incandescent.Drift released the cube, Blurr holding his gaze as he took a dainty sip.

“Now,” Blurr said, and Perceptor only picked up the sound because he'd tuned his audio to it, “Where were we?”

Drift demurred, making a flat gesture with his hand. A boisterous explosion of laughter from Twin Twist and Topspin drowned what Blurr said next, handing the cube back, letting his fingers trail up Drift's arm.

Drift shrugged.

Blurr leaned forward again.

Drift shook his head, and Perceptoer could hear the low tone of his voice—not clear enough to make out words.

Blurr gave another high, chiming laugh, leaning back. “No need to be shy, Drift. All I want is one little kiss.”

Drift pushed back into the couch, helm still and unmoving.Some refusal, Perceptor thought.Hoped.

Blurr ran a long, slow hand over his own helm, stroking down the sleek panels, optics dimming in pleasure at his own touch. “Are you shy? Is that it?” Another laugh.“Adorable.”

Drift's frame went rigid again. Two short, sharp syllables.

Blurr traced his hand down his throat, over the front of his chassis, deliberate display, watching Drift's optics trace the gesture.“Cute,” Blurr repeated. “Not shy like this in private though.”

Even Perceptor caught the warning glare, his own frame tightening.

“Don't want to give me a kiss,” Blurr teased. The volume lifted in his voice, cutting through the rec room buzz, “that's all right.Just seem to remember last night you didn't seem to have a problem sucking my spike.”

Drift bolted upright, mouth contorted into a snarl.Silence fell so suddenly it sucked the air out of the room with it.

A showy shrug. “Guess you like that more.”

Perceptor rose to his feet, the words slapping against him. Not just envy, not just a refusal to conjure the image, but for Drift.Blurr's teasing had an edge, but this went beyond that.Stinging, designed to hurt.And far out of measure, in Perceptor's mind, to Drift's discomfort with being touched in public.

Blurr leaned back, hand trailing to his pelvis. “How 'bout that, instead, huh? Want to suck it here?” A glint of blue malice. “You know I get off on being watched.”

Drift glared, and spun on his heel, striding toward the door, hands clutching at his swords, after a sharp, barked curse.

Blurr looked stunned at the refusal, before his sly smile curled over his face. He caught Perceptor's gaze. “”He's just working up the...right attitude,” Blurr said, nodding lasciviously. “He's a feisty one.”

Perceptor's glare could have eaten through metal. He thought about chasing after Drift.No, that would compound the mech's mortification. If he wanted to talk about it, Perceptor would only pray that Drift would say something later, in their quarters.

He hoped, but he didn't count on it.

 

 

 


	5. Speed and Status 5

_**Speed and Status 5**_  
NC-17  
IDW   
Perceptor/Drift  
sticky  
  


It had been eating at Perceptor—no, devouring him—watching Drift go, again and again, to Blurr's quarters.He always came back...sated, but discontent.Perceptor couldn't say which part bothered him more. But after the kissing incident, after seeing firsthand, the way Blurr toyed with Drift, Drift's almost mortified obedience as he'd gone, later, just as Blurr had predicted...no.He had to stop it.   
  


Drift was getting ready. Perceptor knew the ritual by now, the way his mouth twitched, the way he paced, hands ghosting over his swords.Perceptor had watched this struggle—Drift fencing with something deep inside him, that always, always won—over the edge of a datapad time and again where he'd been perched on his berth or seated at the console. And part of him wondered why Drift roomed with him, still, why he hadn't gone to Springer and demanded his own quarters.But night after night, he slept, half-sitting, leaning against the berth's edge, as if watching over Perceptor.There was something there that gave Perceptor hope.   
  


Drift growled, softly, balling his hands into hard knots of fists.He strode to the door, stopped. Turned, cursing.   
  


Perceptor moved, laying the pad aside. He'd never interrupted this ritual before, and he felt a nervous twitter in his chassis. He tried not to calculate the odds that this risk would fail. He had to at least try. And if it did fail? He would try again.He owed Drift, and the very least of that meant he wanted Drift...not to be tormented like this.“Drift?” he began.   
  


“What.”Drift's head whipped toward him.   
  


“D-do you want to talk or something?” They hadn't spoken about the other night.Perceptor knew when not to pry, but it hung between them—the fact that he'd witnessed that. They'd all witnessed that.And still...that night...Drift had gone to Blurr.   
  


“No.” Adamant, shut down, his face hard.   
  


Try again.“I could show you the ship's holovid collection?” Perceptor got up, crossing to the console.   
  


A sneer. “Don't want to watch a stupid holovid.”   
  


Try again.Don't give up. He's talking. It's...something. “Do you want me to check over that repair for you?”   
  


A flicker over the face, something that shattered the sneer, before the flatness came back up like a shield. “No.” he said, adding, gruffly, “thank you.”   
  


Progress. Progress, Perceptor told himself. “Then what do you want?”   
  


“I want—none of your business what I want,” Drift snapped.He took a step toward the door.   
  


Push harder.You can do it.Being soft almost got you killed. That wasn't safety. “Where are you going?” He hated the taste of the words, already knowing the answer.   
  


Drift glared. “Something I have to do.”   
  


He couldn't even name it, Perceptor thought.He couldn't even say what he was going to do.Perceptor moved toward the door.“No,” he said, quietly.   


“You don't know what you're talking about,” Drift threw back.   


“You're going to interface with Blurr,” Perceptor said, flatly.He could feel the envy roil through his tanks, even as he was grateful for his scientist's detachment that had given him long practice in saying unpleasant things.   


”How,” Drift hissed, optics narrowed to thin blue lines, “Is that any of your concern?”   
  


Perceptor's mouthplates pressed together, steeling himself.You've gotten into this, Perceptor.You can't turn back now.You want him to open up? You have to start. “If it made you happy, it would not be my place to say anything.”   
  


Drift looked stunned, optic shutters blinking rapidly.   
  


Perceptor pressed the advantage, hoping to dodge the question of why Drift's happiness was any of his concern.He wasn't really ready to answer that himself. “Does it? Am I wrong?” his voice softened. “Does it make you happy?”   


Drift wobbled.“Not about happiness. Fraggin' interfacing. Just a release.”   
  


Right.Perceptor did Drift the infinite courtesy of not pointing out what a lie that was. “Then you don't need it to be Blurr.”   
  


Drift bridled, but it was feeble, the last ditch.“He offered. He's good at it.” He shrugged.   
  


Well, Perceptor? How far are you willing to go?   
  


He stepped in front of the door, palm covering the keypad.“I'm offering.” He couldn't stop the nervous cycle of his ventilation. This was laying himself open for rejection, another shot right through the spark chamber.   
  


“You?” Drift's optics traveled over him, clearing for a moment from their angry haze.“No,” he said, after a moment. “I can't. Not you. It...it wouldn't be right.”   
  


Perceptor's optics flashed closed, body jolting as if in physical pain. He remained blocking the door.   
  


“Why not me?” he managed.   
  


“You...I...the ship...,” Drift faltered. “You deserve better,” he said, quietly.   
  


“So do you.” Better than Perceptor. Better than Blurr. But at least Perceptor was aware of that. At least he'd try to make Drift happy.   
  


“Let me go,” Drift said, trying to put the edge of demand into his voice, shoving Perceptor's words aside.   
  


“No.” Perceptor braced himself. This was his line.Drift would not leave tonight. Not to go to Blurr. He didn't care what it took.   
  


“Let me go,” Drift repeated, but the voice was softer now, almost pleading, wanting to escape this conversation, this intimacy he knew he was no good at. “Thought Autobots didn't imprison their own.”   
  


A low blow, a cheap shot and they both knew it.Perceptor let it gloss off him.“All right,” he said, quietly. “I'll let you go, if you can say he makes you happy.”Perceptor would have no right, then.And Drift could lie, just mouth the empty words, but Perceptor knew, somehow, that he couldn't lie. Not about this. Not to Perceptor. He didn't know why, but he knew that much.   
  


“I...,” Drift whirled, his hands flying into fists, sinking one into the wall.“I have to. I need to. You don't understand.”He turned his face, rippling with emotion, away from Perceptor.   
  


“Help me understand,” Perceptor murmured. He pushed off the door, reaching one hand for Drift's elbow, feeling the warmth of the joint, the smooth bevel of the armor.“Please.”   
  


Drift spun into the touch, and the two clattered to the ground. Drift didn't swing, but he grappled against Perceptor's larger frame, the two of them fell together on the decking.Perceptor didn't fight back, simply trying to pull his arms around Drift, pin him against him. This close, he could feel the aroused scrape of Drift's EM field against his, intimately connected with the race of his energon, the thrum of his engines as he wrestled.   
  


They tumbled, landing, Drift sprawled on his back, Perceptor straddling his thighs, trying to pin his arms down.Drift's optics raced down their bodies, back up to Perceptor's face. “You don't want this.”   
  


“I do.”Perceptor released his grip, moving to open his interface hatch.He looked down at Drift, the offer made as clear as he could.   
  


Drift swore, something ugly and dark crossing his face like a stormcloud. He snapped open his own hatch, his spike stabbing out of its housing as he reached to haul Perceptor's hips closer, sinking him onto his spike. Perceptor shuddered, gasping, his hands closing over Drift's on his hips.The spike drove into him, pushing in, expanding the tidy pleats of the valve lining to bump into the ceiling node.Drift waited, optics dark and strange, before he began thrusting in the small distance between their bodies, driving the spike into the valve, lubricant, slick and cool, heating between them.Perceptor heard himself moaning, his vents in ragged, uneven gusts of air. He closed his optics, head tipping back, clinging to Drift's hands.   
  


Drift's spike plunged into him, like a living, self-willed thing, bent only on release, chasing the overload with a fierce, selfish abandon. Drift growled, softly, optics intent on the joining of their bodies, the flash of his silver spike diving into the valve, Perceptor's intent, focused, rapt face.Perceptor cried out at the sudden hard slam of Drift's overload, electricity crackling between them, the hot gush of fluid in his valve tumbling him into a sort of twitching ecstasy.   
  


Drift grunted, dropping his hips back down, hands releasing the black pelvic frame. His optics were fierce, raking over Perceptor's frame.   
  


“Yes?” Perceptor managed, shocks and charge still cascading over his capacitors, the one word standing in for...so much.Am I good enough? Will you not, just this once, leave? Will you trust me withyourself?   
  


“Yes.” Drift's voice was gruff, his hands sliding down over the long silver thighs, almost gentle, accepting and wanting. “Yes.”


	6. Speed and Status 6

_  
**Speed and Status 6**   
_   


NC-17  
IDW  
Drift, Perceptor, Blurr  
sticky

  
Drift woke up, hours later, from a cozy, warm recharge, systems onlining in the dark with the swiftness of long habit, sensing threat.   


No. No threat. Just...the berth beneath him, and over him, next to him, the larger red and black frame of Perceptor, sprawled and limp, one thigh slung over Drift's pelvic structure, The face was relaxed, almost content, losing in recharge the tension that seemed to keep emotions in check.Perceptor looked...exhausted.Drift smirked into the darkness.They had tangled together for hours, bodies surging, heaving against each other, Perceptor compliant to anything Drift asked, as though the only word he knew was 'yes'.   
  


Like Wing...but unlike.Wanting, wanting Drift, wanting Drift's pleasure more than his body, but while Wing had pursued, even in sleep, sometimes, his mouth finding Drift's, his body squirming, aroused, against Drift's hip, Perceptor waited. Receptive, as if too shy to make a move, too fearful of misstep.   
  


The smirk flattened.Pretty hard to drive Drift away.He'd gone back to Blurr, who was far less solicitous of his desires, of his wants, than Perceptor. And...   
  


Perceptor shifted in his recharge, hand clutching gently over Drift's chassis, thigh sliding against him, the cool metal slick and sticky with leaking transfluid.And it struck Drift how...onesided that had been.Using Perceptor, over and over again.And...nothing.He'd taken, from Perceptor, all night.   
  


Drift shifted his left hand, easing it down between their bodies, to Perceptor's still open interface hatch.Perceptor whimpered in his recharge as Drift's fingers gently circled the spike cover, tracing a small, light spiral over the metal, feeling the quiet buzz of the equipment cycling on, the soft click of the cover retracting.Perceptor's spike slid into his hand.Drift had a moment's flashback: Wing, shuddering over him, golden optics burning with tremulous desire.Drift's hand froze: he wasn't ready for that.That was what he was trying to avoid, with Blurr. Emotional traps. Entanglements.   
  


No. He could still do that. He could hold himself back, aloof. This was just being fair. This was just one minor act of selfless pleasure. It didn't mean anything. It didn't.   
  


His hand stroked up the spike, feeling desire ripple over Perceptor's frame, the EM field flaring against his, the spike oozing lubricant.Just pleasure.Just...for once...not seeking only for yourself.His wrist twisted, sliding up and down the spike's length, his fingers glossing over the sensitive nodes, twisting down, then up, slow, even, gentle at first, building slowly, more pressure, faster paced.   
  


Perceptor's body squirmed against him, giving a soft, yearning sigh.Drift tore his gaze from the glossy spike between his fingers and Perceptor's face, tracking the tiny twitches, the glow of desire.The optics flared open, online, suddenly, protective shutters whipping back, piercing, intent.   
  


Drift managed something like a grin, not slacking the pace of his hand over the spike.His EM bumped hard against the red armor, unambiguous that he wanted this, to be answered by a softer-edged return flare.   
  


“Drift...,” Perceptor said, his voice barely stirring the air between them. The hand across his chassis moved, clumsily, trying to caress.   
  


Drift snorted, shaking his head. “Be still.” He wanted this, wanted to watch Perceptor, pure, without involvement.Just...desire controlled.It was manipulation, and he knew it, but he wanted to watch the larger mech overload, wanted to feel the spike crackle in his hand, the shock-burst of transfluid on his body.   
  


Perceptor jolted, the hard pants of his ventilation giving way to a sharp near-bark of release, transfluid shooting hot against Drift, scalding his armor, spattering both of them. Drift growled in response, pleased, the growl melting to a laugh as he continued—slower, more gently—to twist-stroke down and up the slick black shaft of the spike, Perceptor shuddering and gasping beside him.   
  


The control.That's what it was, he thought, suddenly. The control. He wanted to manage Perceptor's desire, have the mech overload when and how Drift wanted, wanted to have himself acknowledged as the keeper of Perceptor's desire.   
  


It made him, he realized, no better than Blurr—manipulating, controlling, selfish.His fierce grin wavered, his hand slowing to a stop on the spike, optics lowering, ashamed.   
  


Perceptor melted against him, curling forward to rest his head on Drift's spaulder, tightening the arm against Drift, pulling him into a comforted embrace.   
  


Drift felt a skirl of discomfort. He didn't want to stay here, didn't deserve this soft, grateful attention.He twisted from under Perceptor's arm, but before he sat up, he turned, suddenly, briefly, shyly, awkwardly bumping his mouth against Perceptor's. It couldn't be called a kiss, really—no openness, no vulnerability, no sharing, but it stood for, he hoped, a hard, awkward apology.   
  


[***]   
  


The first night Drift ignored Blurr's open invitation, he had taken it with an amused good grace. The exotic mech's feelings had been hurt, poor thing didn't feel special.Cute, Blurr thought.And he knew it would only make it sweeter, and hotter, when Drift came crawling back.   
  


The second night, the amused smirk had soured. Drift was taking this too far.And if he was so damn thin-skinned, Blurr thought, who needed him? Seriously. He was hot, but not that hot.Blurr had had better. And he was good enough on the berth, a bit rough-edged and raw, which Blurr liked, but he was hardly a lover worth pining for. Blurr could do better. Huh.   
  


The third night...changed everything. He and Springer had finished a glowering match in the rec room, and he'd sauntered off, letting the green mech get a good, longing optic-ful of his swaying hips. Time to settle this with Drift, he'd thought, and what better way to release a little tension than with some good, rough interfacing, just the way he knew Drift liked it.Let the mech top, he thought, as he headed to Drift's quarters, Perceptor's quarters.Drift was deliciously hot, the way his face contorted with lust, nearly looking angry, as he pumped his hips into Blurr—Drift wild and thrashing, Blurr still and controlled.Quite a hot performance, and Blurr's valve cycled its agreement. His hand hovered over the chime of Perceptor's room when he heard...laughter.Drift's laughter, though it took him a moment to place it—not a sound that had been heard a lot on the Axion.   
  


Laughing.Blurr felt a stab of jealousy.Drift hadn't laughed with him, beyond that hard, dry chuckle.Nothing like the warm roll of sound he heard from behind the door.   
  


And then.   
  


A long pause, and a moan, Perceptor's voice, a soft, sensual, clinging whimper that left no doubt what Blurr might see if he opened the door.Drift...and Perceptor?It was unthinkable.But...there it was.The sound, behind the door, an unmistakable moan, and the same soft, growling laugh he remembered from the white mech.   
  


Blurr raged, his systems burning hot the way they used to after a race, when someone had really given him a challenge—that fury at daring to make him work for it. His fists clenched, tightening on air.   
  


He gave a hot huff, and slammed his hand against the door chime, staying only long enough to hear the sudden, surprised silence before he used his notorious speed, and darted away.   
  


This? Wasn't over. Drift was his.

 


	7. 7

Perceptor, Blurr thought. Perceptor was the key. And more than that, Perceptor was most likely vulnerable. After all, who paid attention to him? Perceptor had spent so much time living in his cortex that he probably didn't realize, half the time, that he even had a body. And it was just like Drift, Blurr thought, to use the proximity for his own advantage. Really, it wasn't fair to Perceptor, being used like that.

And, Blurr thought, drinking the last of his ration, Perceptor was...really not that bad looking. Not Blurr's usual type, but since Blurr's 'type' was generally 'exotic' and 'starry-opticked' that left quite a bit of leeway.

Besides, Blurr thought, Perceptor would just cave in at the least show of interest. Simple plan: have a little...chat with Perceptor. Show him some attention, and the attention-starved big geek would just melt. Downside: he'd probably follow Blurr around like an infatuated puppy. Upside: he'd realize the difference between skill (Blurr) and...whatever Drift brought him—raw aggression, force. Perceptor probably didn’t know how to handle it. Ruining Drift forever.

Simple plan, but perfect. It reminded him of most of his race plans: Win. It was a simple plan, but he liked to think elegant in its simplicity. Just like all of Blurr's plans.

[***]

“Hey, Perceptor,” Blurr leaned against the open door to Perceptor's work room. Not his favorite place to be, but he was on a mission. And so was Perceptor, by the look of it—bent with a rapt intensity over whatever he was working on. Really rapt intensity. Blurr cleared his throat.

Perceptor flinched, shoulders twitching, before turning around. “Can I help you?"

“Depends,” Blurr said, his voice that practiced coy pitch he'd used to charm his way into a thousand race mods' workshops.

Perceptor waited, face blank, expectant. Not even roaming over Blurr's frame. Blurr posed himself a bit more...to advantage along the doorframe, one arm stretched up, creating a long, lean line that snaked sinuously down his frame. “Just wanted to talk, you know, about those...nice upgrades you gave yourself.” He flashed a thousand-watt smile.

Perceptor tilted his head, the reticle making his optics look mismatched. “Nice.” Not...quite perplexed, but as if the word literally made no sense to him.

“You know.” Well, he should. “What you got in, say, the reflex-enhancement line?” Because Blurr had seen him shoot and oh there had to be something. If he'd had something like that back on the racing circuit? Okay, it would probably have been deemed illegal, but, before that, he would have been...even better. Broken more records. Shattered them.

“Nothing for speed,” Perceptor said, quietly. “Different modifications.”

Blurr shrugged. “Well, you could always work something up, right?” He flashed an incandescent smile, the one he used to show to the crowds at the track.

“I…could.” A hesitation, distance in the voice.

“Great,” Blurr said. “When can I expect them?”

A blank stare. Huh. Thought Perceptor was supposed to be smart. “Busy just now.”

Busy? Blurr felt a frown of annoyance crease his face. Was he getting blown off? Blurr waited. Perceptor would spill it. Couldn’t keep his vocalizer shut if you paid him to.

Nothing. Perceptor fiddled absently with a tool in his hands.

“Something for Springer?”

“No.”

Another silence. Not entirely awkward, just…annoying. Perceptor should want to talk to him, be tripping over himself to talk to Blurr. Why wasn’t he? …Drift. It had to be. Blurr felt the frown deepen.

He forced his facial plating smooth. No. He wasn’t going to do that, mar his face. Not for Perceptor; not for Drift. “Don’t know what he sees in you,” he blurted.

Perceptor stiffened, the hands going rigid on the tool he had been toying with. “He.”

“Drift. What? Does he prop you against the wall?” Blurr felt a blaze of satisfaction that the stiff face cracked, the mouth parting, appalled.

The optics flickered, lambent with hurt. Blurr snickered. Undermining a rival’s confidence was all part of the pre-race strategy. Oh this felt…wonderfully familiar. He’d missed this sort of challenge.

Only, it really wasn’t much of a challenge. Perceptor hardly qualified as a rival.

“He chose me,” Perceptor said, voice quaking with what Blurr at first thought was fear, but realized was a sort of indignant anger.

Blurr’s lipplate curled. “For now. Sooner or later he’ll get bored of drilling a stiff board like you.” He forced the sneer into a smile. Because, honestly? What threat did Perceptor represent? Blurr was only speaking the truth here. “And he’ll want someone who actually knows what he’s doing.” A beat. “Outside having read it in a datafile. If you can even read those without embarrassment.”

The mouthplates flattened, the blue optics shimmering with hurt. And for a moment, Blurr almost felt bad. Almost.

“I can’t help you,” Perceptor said, quietly, tamping down something in his voice. His optics fixed on Blurr’s face for a long moment, something dark moving behind the blue lenses.

“I’ll come back later,” Blurr said, easily. He could feel Perceptor’s reaction—hot jealousy, and it was like some sort of high grade to him. He turned, paused, turning in a way he knew was theatrical, photogenic. “And tell Drift I can’t wait to see him again,” he drawled, optics coy, reveling in the way the black hand clutched at the tool.

Hang on to that, Blurr thought, giving a sly wink. Because Drift is slipping through your clumsy fingers.

 

[***]

Perceptor watched the door close behind Blurr, his ventilations fighting his control. The blue racer’s words had cut deeply, into that place deep inside him, like an abscess, emotion boiling to the surface, as Blurr had spoken all his deepest fears. Drift would get tired of him, bored of him. It was only a matter of time. Blurr knew more, was bolder, more adventurous. Less…awkward.

And Blurr was beautiful. And witty. And clever, and confident…. I’d choose him, too, Perceptor thought, staring dully at the multimeter in his hand. Straight comparison, Blurr and himself? Blurr. No question.

Perceptor turned back to his workbench, where he’d spread out the new stabilizers he was working on. He could fix that. He could make himself an asset in combat—steady hand, keen vision, autotargeting. That much, he could fix. But…the rest of him? No. He’d never have Blurr’s flash, Blurr’s easy way about everything. It was just a matter of time before he lost Drift. Just when he finally had something he wanted, something that…seemed to want him.

He sighed. Pointless. It was all pointless.

“Hey.” A voice from the doorway, deep, quiet. Only the stabilizers Percpetor had already installed saved him from a giveaway twitch.

“Drift?” He turned, the white mech standing in the doorway, holding a cube. Drift stood on the threshold, as though unsure of his right to be there.

A fleeting smile. “Didn’t want you to miss your ration.” So many small hints, in the words, in the hitching hesitation in the way Drift held out the cube, of the life Drift used to live: rationing, competition. But most of what Perceptor saw was consideration. No one had come to check on him before, much less worry about his fueling.

And some—not all—of Blurr’s words fell away. He couldn’t imagine Drift doing this for Blurr. Drift had always seemed a bit distant from the blue mech when they weren’t…together. “Thank you,” he said, quietly, turning further, as Drift stepped over the threshold, offering the cube.

Drift gave an awkward shrug, at a loss how to answer. The moment stretched between them, long and clumsy, like a Pirlian trackworm. “You can drink it,” Drift said, finally. “Didn’t tamper with it or anything.”

Perceptor cocked his head at what the statement implied. Was that normal on Decepticon ships? He nodded, unsealing the lid and taking a drink, if for no other reason than to convince Drift he trusted him.

The energon rushed through his systems like effervescent light, releasing pressure on some tight pistons. “Thank you,” he repeated, dumbly, but sincerely. He managed a smile.

“Saw Blurr leaving,” Drift said. Not a question, not an accusation. Perceptor hesitated.

“He wanted me to do some modifications for him,” he said, eventually. That was part of what Blurr had said, though Perceptor wasn’t even sure that was sincere. He wasn’t sure of any of Blurr’s motivations, honestly. The blue mech barely gave him a look, normally. “I have other things I’m working on,” he added, as if he needed to explain. Drift’s look was strange, the optics hooded, as though he wanted to ask a question but couldn’t bring himself to.

The white helm turned to the door and Perceptor felt his spark gutter. Was he thinking of going after Blurr? All the insecurities began whirling around him again, like a cyclone, a wall of air and difference between he and Drift. Perceptor wanted to do something to stop that, wished he had the nerve to put the cube down, heave Drift into a kiss, interface with him right there on the workroom floor. But as much as he wanted to, as much as the very thought sent his systems spinning…he couldn’t. He couldn’t push himself on Drift. He always waited until Drift was ready, reached out to him.

Drift shifted his weight from side to side. “Should be going.”

No! Perceptor thought, wildly. If Drift left, he’d go to Blurr. Perceptor knew it. “Please,” he said, too fast, rocking forward, some energon dripping over the edge. He cursed his own clumsiness, mortified, in front of Drift. With a weapon, he was good—getting better with every refinement. And yet here he was…speechless, sloppy, almost frantic. “Drift.”

Drift turned in the doorway. “What?”

A long, rakingly awkward moment. “Who’s Wing?” Perceptor blurted.

Drift jolted as though Perceptor had struck him with live current. “Where did you hear that name?” His tone was something Perceptor had never heard before: halfway between menacing and despairing.

Perceptor would have given…a lot to reel those words back, out of the air. “I…you’d said it. When I was in regen.” He hid—cowered—behind the truth.

Drift’s optics grew hard and flat. “Forget,” he said, coldly, “you ever heard it.” A screeching sound, Drift’s heelplate digging an arc into the floor as he spun, storming off.

Perceptor hung, stupidly, dumbly, the cube shaking in his hands. He’d ruined everything. He had done what he’d feared: clung too tightly, and it had driven Drift away.


	8. Chapter 8

Drift caught up with Blurr halfway down the corridor, storming headlong, hands in hard fists until he snatched at one of Blurr’s shoulderpanels, spinning him around and into the hard steel of the bulkhead. There was a flare of confusion in the optics, blue against blue, before they read Drift’s contorted face, and the mouth plates curled into a smile. “Missed you, too,” Blurr said, before his mouth was covered by Drift’s, the mouthplates bruising against him.   
  
“Shut up,” Drift said, breaking the kiss, hands hard on Blurr’s frame, shoving him against the wall.   
  
Blurr’s systems, still primed from the heady confrontation with Perceptor, blazed on. He hooked Drift’s knee with one heel, puling the white mech against him. “Make me.”   
  
It was worth it for the feral snarl on Drift’s face. Everything Blurr had said to Perceptor was true: there were simply things Drift wanted, Drift did, Drift was, that were beyond Perceptor’s ability to handle. Slag, Drift had shown it himself just now, just by coming to Blurr.   
  
Blurr tasted triumph in the hard kiss, as Drift ground against him. They tumbled to the floor in a clattering rush, Blurr taking the opportunity to wrap his legs around the white hips, under the scabbards, his thighs scraping the sensitive undersides. Drift moaned into him, hands desperate along his body.   
  
Blurr purred. This…was how he wanted it, Drift on the edge of control, trembling, frantic, helpless before his lust; Blurr the channel, cool, in control. The whole disruption of whatever it was between Perceptor and Drift just made it sweeter.   
  
“Want me?” Blurr murmured. He levered his hips, twisting Drift underneath him, leaning forward, his elbows on the white chassis, mouth inches from a kiss. He ground his pelvic span in open invitation over Drift’s.   
  
Drift snarled.   
  
Blurr grinned, reaching between them, unsnapping the hatches with one smooth, practiced gesture. Drift’s optics flickered in anticipation, body surging up against Blurr’s. Blurr rocked his hips over Drift’s, the bare metal of their exposed equipment covers sliding together, hot and satiny. Drift moaned, openly, optics dimming, hands clutching around Blurr’s shoulders.   
  
The spike cover retracted itself beneath Blurr’s contact, the spike slick and wet, jabbing out against Blurr’s still covered valve. “Tell me you want me,” Blurr teased, dropping down to nip the parted mouthplates.   
  
“Frag,” Drift gasped. “Obvious?”   
  
Blurr laughed. Of course it was. “I want you to say it,” he purred, rubbing his covered valve wantonly over the spike, the metal rim grating over the spike’s underside nodes. “Say it, Drift. Tell me you want me.”  
  
Drift groaned, hands digging into Blurr’s shoulders, almost hard enough to hurt. “Fine! Want you. Now.” He jerked his hips up against the taunting valve.   
  
Blurr winked, lifting his pelvic frame, releasing the valve cover. He lowered himself down, pausing, his trained racer’s legs giving him control a mech like Drift could only envy. And Perceptor…never even match. The mouth of his valve pushed against the head of the spike. “Not…good enough. Say, ‘I want you, Blurr’.” The name was important. He was no anonymous fuck. Even in his racing days.   
  
Drift bucked his hips, but Blurr knew this old trick and had clamped his knees around the rebellious white frame. Drift snarled. “Stop holding out.”   
  
“But I’m not holding out,” Blurr murmured. “I just want you to have some manners.”   
  
Drift’s face clouded, the comment striking home, some place deep. His hands clamped on Blurr’s hips. “I want you. Blurr.” He spat the words, as though hating the admission.   
  
Blurr…was okay with that. “Close enough,” he flicked his glossa over the angry mouth, “this time.” He rocked back, lifting away from the kiss, settling the spike inside him, tormenting Drift with the slow way he eased himself down, the spike filling his valve inch by inch. He allowed himself a sigh of pleasure. Drift did have a nice spike. In addition to that fiery spirit. Blurr was used to being wanted, being treated like a special commodity. The novelty of Drift’s half-abrasive desire was something irresistible.   
  
He moved, rocking his valve, his hips riding slowly over Drift’s pelvic span. And Drift was his, optics wide and almost blank, mouth parted, rapt, entirely at Blurr’s whim and direction. Caught, trapped, his entire system firing and and keyed to the motion of Blurr riding his spike.   
  
Blurr’s.   
  
[***]  
  
Drift waited outside the door to Perceptor’s quarters for a long moment, straining to hear any sound within. Which didn’t help: Perceptor barely made a sound unless they were interfacing, and on those instances, he was wanton, whimpering, moaning, crying out, as if desire was too strong to be held in his frame, as if it must escape through sound.   
  
Face what you have done, Drift, he told himself, staring at the burnished blurred reflection of his face in the metal . You did it on purpose. You left, and went to Blurr, knowing it would hurt Perceptor, wanting it to hurt him. And why? Because he dared to try to reach out. Because he mentioned Wing.   
  
You’re right, Drift. You’re no Autobot.   
  
He coded the door open, slipping inside, crouching low to spread his weight. Perceptor lay in recharge on the berth, a datapad tumbled loose from his hand making obvious what he’d intended to do: stay up, until Drift returned.   
  
Drift drew his Great Sword, gently, slowly, the schuss of metal seeming to hiss in the otherwise silent room. Perceptor’s recharging systems were barely a hum, barely covering the sound as Drift folded himself onto the floor, curling in a ball half under the berth, pressing against the support strut. Hiding, he told himself. Hiding from the blame you’ve earned. Since when do you hide?   
  
“Drift.” The word floated out, down to him.  
  
Drift’s optics squeezed shut. “Yes.”  
  
A long silence, and he could feel Perceptor struggle with what to say. And he struggled, trying to formulate an answer for the blame, the question, that would be flung at him.   
  
Perceptor spoke. “I’m sorry.”   
  
Drift jolted. Not…what he had been expecting. “For what?”   
  
“For offending you. For pushing you away. Back to…,” Perceptor’s voice cracked.   
  
Drift felt his hands ball into impotent fists. Who are you going to hit, Drift? Who are you angry at? Yourself. You just…take it out on everyone around you. “Not your fault.”   
  
“It is.”   
  
Drift cycled air. “I’ll ask Springer for new quarters in the morning.”   
  
A hiss of air above him, cold and sharp, like a blade being drawn across metal. “Drift—.” And then silence. And then, “As you will.”   
  
Drift ached, staring for a long moment at the berth’s underside, hating himself. But no, he argued. This was for the best. Look. You’re only hurting him. You’re breaking him down. You can’t control yourself. It’s like you told him: he deserved better.   
  
Maybe this way, in time, Perceptor would get that chance.   
  
Drift pushed back, spaulders bumping into the berth, cycling his optics down, willing this night to be over. 


	9. Chapter 9

Blurr laughed, the vibration traveling through the black metal in front of him, as he hooked one hand around Drift’s thigh, hauling him closer to the edge of the berth.  One advantage of Drift’s new quarters, cramped as they were, was just this kind of opportunity.  He covered the rim of the valve with his mouth, glossa over the protective cover, tapping a sharp, wanting tattoo against the warm metal. Drift moaned, one hand clutching for Blurr’s over his hip. 

“Behave, now,” Blurr murmured, just to hear the defiant growl, feel the abdominal actuators fire under his hand.  His glossa flicked again at the cover, as if asking for admittance.  Drift groaned, hips rolling, as the cover retracted.  Blurr resettled himself on his knees, parting Drift’s thighs over the edge of the berth. One of the white mech’s heels hooked on the berth’s edge, the other dangled off, barely touching the ground.  Drift’s short legs were…strangely alluring to Blurr, all of that power and speed compacted into small space. So unlike Blurr’s own long, elegant limbs. 

And this: Drift’s resistance, Blurr’s inexorable mouth licking at the valve’s rim, the white mech gasping, twitching in time, as though he were an instrument for Blurr to play. 

And play he did, sealing his mouth around the valve, sucking in a sharp breath, letting the suction travel through the valve, firing the nodes, his glossa then intruding searching for a node to lap against. 

“Blurr,” Drift said, warning, squirming, but powerlessly, wanting control, but also wanting this, helpless before his own arousal.

Blurr lifted his head. “Yes?”  Let him have what he thinks he wants. 

Drift groaned, pelvic span surging up after the mouth.  Oh, Blurr had something for that.  He caught Drift’s gaze, the blue optics over the white chassis, and wiped one finger across his mouth, glossed with Drift’s lubricant, before pushing it into the valve.  The optics widened, Drift sucking in a sharp vent of air, helm lolling back.  

This was the whole point, Blurr thought, twisting his finger in the valve, foxing the calipers that tried to cinch down against it. Why go to Perceptor when Blurr was so much better?  And knew so much more. 

Like this.  Blurr pushed in another finger, beginning a long, slow motion in the valve, rolling the fingers back and forth in a sort of ‘come here’ gesture.  Drift moaned, body twisting, hand clutching tight over one thigh.  Blurr laughed, licking the sweet fluid off his own lips, his ventilation matching the rising pants of the white chassis.

Drift arched up, the valve clamping down against Blurr’s fingers, and for a moment he was just rigid, on the edge of ecstasy, before tumbling off it with a scream that filled the small space, hands scraping against his thighs, one heelplate gouging into the berth. 

And this…this was the reward: the gush of fluid, a hot rush, over his hand.  So Drift was one of those.  He’d suspected as much. 

He chuckled, the excess valve lubricant dripping off his wrist, puddling on the floor in thin splats, as Drift lay, shuddering, on the berth, valve quivering around Blurr’s hand.  “Gusher, are you?”  He gave a teasing wiggle of his hand: Drift gave a choked squeak, another rush of scalding fluid pouring over Blurr’s fingers.  “Don’t worry,” Blurr purred. “It’s hot.” He withdrew his hand, coyly, licking the hot salty fluid of his fingers. “Do it any time you like.” 

Top that, Perceptor . 

 

[***]

Perceptor sat in the back of the rec room, curled over the datapad.  He couldn’t even pretend like he belonged. He couldn’t pretend anything anymore. He was only here out of rote routine.

No, that wasn’t true. He was here to hurt himself, to slice his emotions raw watching Drift. Drift sat, away from the cluster of the other Wreckers, who were engrossed in some game of chance, optics distant. Was he troubled? 

Not your concern, Perceptor. Not your place. He’d told you as much, moving out coldly, and even the strange look in his optics as he’d said a muffled, hurried, ‘thank you,’ was nothing.  Mere discomfort. Regret. Probably hating, in retrospect, every moment he’d had with Perceptor, every moment that had kept him away from Blurr.

He’d lost.  Drift had chosen Blurr, and he had no place to question that. It was his own stupidity, his own naivete, that kept his optics lingering, almost hungrily, over the white armor.

Drift looked up from the datapad he had been idly thumbing through, the catlike finials swinging upward, and Perceptor was so enthralled in that movement, the graceful sweep of the armor, that he didn’t—quite—follow the gaze, until he saw the blue optics looking into his. He flinched, flustered, at the gaze, and turned away, though his spark flared at the almost-timid smile. 

Oh Drift, he thought, aching at the simple, beautiful grace of the mech’s movements. That had been his, before he’d tried too hard. 

And then Blurr swung into the room, blue hips swinging, almost as if he knew exactly where Drift would be, and flopped himself over the dark thighs, knocking the datapad carelessly out of Drift’s hands. Drift’s hands jerked out of the way, awkwardly, lap filling with Blurr, and the blue mech reaching up, pulling the startled face down into a kiss. 

Perceptor got up, not even caring how obvious it was, as the stool he’d been perching on scraped loudly against the floor. The warmth around his spark burst into green, acid flames. He couldn’t be here right now, watching them. In front of him.

It made no difference. He knew—he knew—they were together.  So why did it matter, seeing them? Why did it hurt?

He didn’t know.  It defied logic and reason and everything. All he knew was that he had to get away.

 

[***]

Drift tore his mouth from Blurr’s as Perceptor made his exit. He wasn’t good at this, but even he could see the tight pain on the red mech’s face.  Not a hot flash of jealousy, but actual pain. But…Perceptor had offered, like a business transaction. It hadn’t meant anything to him, really, had it?

“What?” Blurr murmured, running a finger down his cheek.

“Perceptor.” Under the heavy rim of his helm, his brow furrowed. “Looked hurt.”

“So?” Blurr shrugged. “Not your problem.”

Drift frowned.  “Should go talk to him.

Blurr simpered, "And I do not want to be alone." 

“I--,” Drift looked uncertainly at the closing door.

“Drift,” Blurr murmured, sliding one hand between the legs he sat on, trailing his fingers up the inner thigh seams, “Trust me. I know Perceptor better than you do.”


	10. Chapter 10

NC-17  
IDW  
Blurr, Drift, Perceptor  
sticky, coitus interruptus  
  
  


Drift let Blurr pull him down onto Blurr’s berth, trying to ignore the niggling voice in the back of his cortex.  He couldn’t even hear it clearly, no idea what it was saying, just a disquieted buzz.

Probably best to drown it, he thought, mouth meeting Blurr’s with some force, glossa intruding through the lipplates.  Blurr gave a growl of pleasure beneath him, spreading his thighs, squeezing them against Drift’s waist.  Drift had never had anyone who wanted him—who never refused his advances, who seemed to enjoy, at some level, his attention. 

And here he had two: Blurr and Perceptor, as different as he could imagine.  And even their desires were different: Perceptor offering, Blurr dangling, taunting his desire in front of him like a toy. 

Which was why he had chosen Blurr—that distance Blurr had from his own arousal, reminding them both this was just a game, just an exchange. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t deep. 

He pushed against the blue frame beneath him, the desire he’d been restraining all evening welling up in his systems, his spike surging against the cover.  He could already feel, fed from memory, the silky tight slide of Blurr’s valve around it, holding, containing him. 

A laugh, buzzing against his chassis, across their lipplates, as Blurr squirmed a hand between them. Drift made room, lifting his hips, thrumming with anticipation.  “Eager,” Blurr teased. 

“That a problem?”

Another laugh, husky. “Not at all, Drift.” The hand rubbed over his pelvic span, taunting, before it flipped open the panel. Drift rocked his hips, shoving his spike’s cover against the teasing fingers. 

Blurr circled the spike cover, letting it whisk itself aside, palm curling around the slick spike as it jutted from the housing.  He stroked the spike, grinning as Drift pushed against his hand, shifting his weight to the side, his grip on the spike.

Drift frowned, muttering frustration.  “Want you,” he said, admitting that much. Was that what Blurr wanted? This game again?

“Mmmmm,” Blurr said, “I can see that. I can feel it, too.” He twisted his hand around the spike, sending a jolt through Drift’s frame. 

Drift pushed a hand between the blue thighs, reaching for Blurr’s interface hatch.  The thighs clamped down on his hand, pinning him. Blurr shook his head, optics glinting. “I want you this way.”

Drift growled. “I don’t.”

An easy shrug. “Too bad.”

“No, it’s not,” Drift said, levering his knee between the legs, pushing himself back over Blurr.

“No.” Blurr’s voice was flat and cutting. 

“Why?”  Drift could feel frustration melding with anger.  He wanted Blurr. What more could Blurr want? What stupid game was he up to now?

“Because I said no.” The hand squeezed his spike, hard enough to hurt.  Drift winced, biting a cry of primal pain as he jerked back, yanking his spike from Blurr’s grasp.  He lay on his back for a long moment, spike jabbing, stung by the air, ventilations sharp and ragged. He was…sick of this.  Sick of having to play a game. He’d thought Blurr was better because Blurr didn’t take it seriously, but he saw now that the blue mech did. Very seriously. Just the control more than the emotion.

And he’d let himself be led. 

Not anymore.

Drift pushed up, shoving his spike, aching, painful, back in its housing. Better that than stay here, Blurr’s toy. 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Not going to tell you,” Drift snapped, snatching for his Great Sword.  The fact that he’d been here so often that he had a spot for the sword irked him, and he slammed it home in its attachments with a force that distracted him from the ache of his thwarted spike. 

“Why not?”

Drift turned, his mouth curling into a sneer he thought he’d left behind in Crystal City. “Because I said so.”

“You’re not leaving.” Halfway between a question and an order.

[***]

Really, Blurr had had enough. Drift had been entertaining in the rec room, and coaxing him out of his little scruples had been a cute little novelty, but Drift had been…difficult.  He didn’t used to be this way. He used to be more tractable and much more fun.

Perceptor, he thought.  That sulky, sullen Perceptor needed to be dealt with. He lost, and he should have the decency to keep his puppy-dog loss to himself and not try to spoil things. Pettty. Immature. He expected better from the scientist.

Eh, maybe not. Spend all your life locked up in a lab, maybe you didn’t know how things worked. Blurr knew. In life: winners and losers. And losers had to learn to lose well. Blurr had learned that lesson himself, his early days on the circuit. Part of the reason he hated losing: he hated that acid burn of shame that started from the optics, roiled over the face, settled, finally, below one’s tanks. 

So, fine. He’d do a public service and tell Perceptor where to get off.  Better for all of them. 

After all, just a game, right? 

[***]

   
The range. He found solace in the range, sending round after round down range. The jump of the pistol in his hand, the steady tempo—kop-kop-kop—of the rounds, the rhythm of his targeting reticle’s process queue, soothed him somehow: violence and control, release and restraint.

He still hurt, every time he stopped to reload or to reprogram targets. Every time his cortex could let slip from the focus of targeting a shot, or reloading the gun, the pain returned. 

Self-inflicted, he thought. Stupid to have thought more.  Stupid to let yourself get attached.  Gratitude was what you told yourself. Really? Does gratitude hurt? More than that, did gratitude have a right to hurt the one you were trying to thank?

No.

So this, however real it felt, wasn’t real. It shouldn’t be happening. He shoved it aside. 

But it still hurt, even after he’d sent 500 rounds downrange. It…wasn’t working. Time to give up. 

Perceptor sighed, the hot air gusting down his sides, as he stripped the targets, loaded the pistol—as per Wrecker SOP—with live rounds.  The hour was late, his own charge low: maybe he could recharge, now.

He left the range, into the larger, open practice area where the Wreckers practiced their hand-to-hand. Drift had promised, one night, their bodies shedding heat, exhausted, sated, where Drift’s voice was a silken murmur, to show him some moves. Even this place, then, was stained, colored by what might have been.

“Going somewhere?”  Blurr’s voice, drawled, like one of Drift’s swords against stone.

Perceptor stiffened at Blurr, and then the strange challenge. “Quarters.”

“Alone.”  An edge to his voice.

“Yes.” Of course. Unfortunately. He steeled his face expressionless.

“Miss him?” The helm tilted, coy.

A choking sound. Yes. So much so that ‘yes’ seemed like a blasphemous understatement. He blinked, giving no answer.

“He doesn’t miss you, Perceptor.”  Blurr stepped back, blocking the door, leaning against it in overt display. This is what he chose. You don’t—dare—question his choice.

Perceptor didn’t. His head lowered, even so taller, bulkier than Blurr. He had remade himself entirely after his resurrection and it still wasn’t enough. He still didn’t matter.  “I know.”

“You need to stay out of it.”

“I am.”  I’m trying. 

“He doesn’t want you. Moping around.  Seriously.  Lose with dignity. I’m embarrassed for you.”

Perceptor’s mouth opened, as if Blurr had struck him hard, full force, in the belly, no sound but a squeak of pain. And his hand came up, the loaded gun still in it, as if it belonged to someone else, the black eye of the barrel moving to stare Blurr directly between the optics. “Stop,” he heard his voice say, chalky and cold as death, “talking.”  It was the closest thing to mercy he could offer—shut up while I can still keep my finger off the trigger.

A hand, a white back-panel, on the gun, prying it up, gently. “Play nice,” Drift’s voice, quiet, giving away nothing.  He lifted the gun with one hand, the other reaching with a hiss of metal, and Perceptor found his palm filled with the hilt of a sword.  Drift stepped back, the gun in his hand.  “Heard everything,” he murmured, his head tilting to one side, and the optics were cold and blue and distant and…pointing at Blurr.  

Drift stepped back.  The sword’s blade was in Blurr’s throat, held by Perceptor’s hand.  And Perceptor knew this was something Drift was offering him, approving him and…choosing his side. His chassis shuddered with emotion, his engine choking, guttering. “Kneel,” Perceptor said, his voice a hard hiss of static.

Blurr’s optics narrowed with scorn. Perceptor pressed in with the blade, the weight unfamiliar in his wrist, but enough to push the sharp blade against a fuel line. Blurr’s face changed, the control slipping, as he dropped down, slowly, to one knee, then the other, hands raised.  “Don’t be stupid,” he said, his voice suddenly small, defiance trickling from his voice like the thin line of energon sliding up the blade.

“I’m not,” Perceptor said.  “Hands up more.”  
  
“What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Whatever he wants,” Drift murmured.

“You’re a witness.”

A snort. “Witness to what?”  A blade in his voice: Blurr had no friend here.

“He could kill me.” Looking past Perceptor, still, as though Perceptor didn’t matter.  Perceptor pressed with the blade.

Drift crossed behind Perceptor’s back. “Any of us can. Any time. Why you should have respect.”  Some dark hint behind the words that Perceptor couldn’t—entirely—parse.

But Drift’s voice sent velvet shimmers through Perceptor, just the voice. He barely noted the words, other than they were for him, against Blurr.   

“Perceptor should have some respect. He lost.”

“And you won.”  A sudden acid coldness in Drift’s voice.  Perceptor wondered what had happened between the two, whom he’d last seen curled together, to bring this blade of ice between them.

“He’s not,”  Perceptor heard his own voice, glacial, brittle, speaking up for the first time, “a prize.  A trophy. He’s…,” he faltered.  What, Perceptor?  What word could possibly encompass him? Savior, beautiful, honorable…. “Drift.”

A strange sound from behind him, from Drift. Had he offended the white mech? Again? Overstepped? 

And then a white arm around his chassis, and a pressure against his squared backplate, a hot mouth on the back of his neck, possessive, claiming. Perceptor shivered.  “Thank you,” Drift whispered, and his dentae bit fiercely into the back of the collar armor, until Perceptor could feel the metal give. Perceptor bit back a moan that threatened to erupt from his vocalizer.  The hand released him, fingers stroking along the heavy chestplate, feathering delight over his net like sharp stars.

“I think,” Drift said, lifting his head to peer at Blurr over Perceptor’s shoulder, “you should go.” 

Dismissal, cold and clean as a sword cut. “This isn’t over,” Blurr muttered, pushing the blade aside. 

“It is.”  Drift, brooking no denial.


	11. Chapter 11

NC-17  
IDW  
Drift, Perceptor,  
sticky  
  
  


Drift stepped back, and the sudden cool emptiness against Perceptor’s backstruts seemed to burn, igniting lust and anger in Perceptor’s cortex. 

Perceptor stepped to the training room door, coding the lock. 

He stood up, snapping the cable tight before gliding over to where Drift stood, quiet, expectant.  Perceptor held out the sword, hilt first, offering it back to Drift, and…offering more. Himself. 

Drift’s hand closed over his. Their optics met, blue against blue, and Perceptor fell into the glow, rocking forward, nearly spinning with vertigo, trembling with desire to touch Drift’s body a desire so long—too long—denied. 

He forgot Blurr, for a moment, succumbing to his need to touch, to give in, to take what Drift was offering to him. His hands skimmed over the armor, stirring the EM field, barely daring to touch until Drift leaned into it.  Perceptor’s palms  spread, stroking over the silk of Drift’s white plating, down the arms, the strong fingers, and then to the white pelvic girdle, thumbs tracing the bevel. Drift released a sighing vent, lifting his arms out of the way, opening himself to the touch. 

Perceptor dropped to his knees, burying his face in the fine black plating of Drift’s abdomen, mouth ardent, tracing the contours, openly worshipping. He didn’t care.  He didn’t have Blurr’s experience, Blurr’s skill, but he did have this: pure, raw, naked adoration. His mouth dipped lower, nuzzling down the pelvic arch to feel the subtle vibration, the delicate heat of Drift’s interface systems through his armor. His hands trembled, wrapping around the hips, under the scabbards.

He sighed, laying his helm against the fine black mesh of Drift’s midsection, just…breathing him in, forcing the moment to last.  A hand brushed his shoulder, then skimmed his scope. Perceptor shivered at the light touch, remembering those strong, dark hands glossing over his armor.  Perceptor cupped his hand, thumb finding the interface hatch’s release, inhaling the hot, charged scent as the panel retracted. He tilted his head up as a knuckle skirted his audio, attention split.

Drift dropped to his knees, pushing Perceptor over, backward, his spike sliding down Perceptor’s frame as he slid down, his mouth hunting Perceptor’s, urgent and hungry. Perceptor’s shoulders hit the floor, hard, jarring against the cool ground, his hands clutching at the white spaulders. 

Drift growled into the kiss, his hips grinding over Perceptor’s pelvic frame, sliding his slick spike over Perceptor’s closed hatch, as if too caught up to notice. Perceptor clamped his hands around the chassis, under the heavy spaulders, arching his chestplate into Drift’s armor. 

Perceptor murmured some reply even he didn’t understand, the hands around Drift’s chassis locking, as he threw his weight to one side, spinning with Drift, splaying his legs over the white hips, snapping his own panel open.  Drift flashed a lopsided grin up at him, pushing impatiently against Perceptor’s aft.  Perceptor’s answering smile was softer, shyer, as he settled himself, with a gasp, on the spike. Their optics locked, and for a long moment both hung, enthralled, as the spike settled itself into Perceptor’s valve, his calipers sliding against it. 

Drift’s optics flamed with desire as Perceptor began rocking, slowly at first, simply shifting the spike in his valve, before picking up tempo.  Their hands locked, fingers twining together, gripping at each other. Their ventilation cycles synchronized. Perceptor could feel Drift’s struggle to remain still, to keep himself flat on the ground, letting Perceptor take him, without guiding—the tension thrummed through the thigh servos, down the scabbards that Perceptor’s thighs slid over. 

Drift bucked against him, a sharp hiss the only warning that his control had slipped.  Perceptor felt the strike of the charge across his nodes an instant later, arching his spinal struts against the hot rush of transfluid, Drift’s hands clenching his so tightly that pain swam with ecstasy through his net.

He signed, frame sagging, lurching forward, overwhelmed, wanting nothing more than to lay on the sleek white body beneath him.  And Drift’s arms opened around him, pulling him down, one thigh raising between his legs.  Perceptor’s optics flicked to the locked door.

“You’re thinking of Blurr.”  A question, masked in the surety of a question.

“Yes,” Perceptor said, realizing it was the first word he’d spoken to Drift himself, and feeling the strangeness: that he hadn’t needed words with Drift, that their bodies spoke everything between them.  It was everything he’d ever wanted, and more than he’d ever dreamed. 

“Don’t.”  Something like a smile under the insistence.

“He won’t end it this way.”

A wry snort, and hands stroking gently over Perceptor’s shoulders.  “We will.”  And there was a burning intensity in the ‘we’ that set Perceptor ablaze, as though his spark itself had burst into flame, immolating all doubt, all worry, for the first time since he could remember.

 

[***]

Drift arched his back, hands clutching at Perceptor’s black hipframe.  “More,” he gasped.

Perceptor shuddered against him, catching his breath, before picking up the pace of his thrusts.  Drift was insatiable, it seemed.  And Perceptor had never been wanted this way, never had anyone so hungry for him.  His ventilation fans kicked on, feeling the valve ripple around his spike, a warm rush of liquid over his heated nodes.

Drift raised his hands over his head, begging for restraint: Perceptor shifted his weight, clamping a hand over the crossed wrists, bracing his body’s weight, the only points of their bodies touching were their interface equipment, the hard scrape of thigh against thigh. 

The overload was raging through his systems, and he fought it off, hissing through his dentae, driving into Drift.  The mech wanted him, had offered himself to him, coaxing and kissing, his fingers, his mouth summoning desire from just under the surface of Perceptor’s dermal plating.  He wanted nothing more than to please Drift, to watch the play of arousal and pleasure over the other’s face, the distant, lidded blue optics, the way the hands curled against his, the mouth shifting, twitching, half-forming words and inchoate sounds of desire.

The white body bucked against his, chassis rising off the berth to slam against his chestplate, as Drift threw his head back, racked by the rush of current.  The valve seemed to clamp over Perceptor’s spike, demanding its own release, and Perceptor felt lust overcome his restraint, transfluid bursting down the channels of his spike.  It was a savage desire, far removed from the timid, safe releases he had known before, opening a door he hadn’t realized he’d had, into his own desires, a taste of power, limned with pleasure.

Drift gave a shuddering sigh, his frame vibrating against Perceptor, pulling him down to the berth with a languorous stretch. Perceptor shifted his weight to one side, angling his chassis off the white armor, releasing his hold on the wrists, letting one hand stroke down Drift’s frame, his mouth bending to place a kiss, like a petal, on the other’s mouth. 

They lay together for a long time, systems cycling down into a sweet, pleasant torpor, Perceptor’s limbs delightfully heavy. He wormed forward, pressing his mouth against the other’s helm.

“Perceptor.”  A soft whisper, a hand squeezing one of his

“Yes?” 

A long hesitation and he could feel something like Drift summoning courage or strength to speak.  “Would you do something for me.”

“Anything.” The word rushed from his mouth like a bird. He curled, warm and protective, over the white frame, feeling a surge of tenderness for the other. 

Drift moved beneath him, and it took Perceptor a moment to realize the other mech was reaching for one of his short swords. He pressed it into Perceptor’s hand.  “Cut me.” 

Perceptor’s hand flattened, refusing to grip the sword. “Drift--,"

“I need it.” The helm tilted, head away, as though Drift couldn’t bear to meet the other’s gaze.

“I can’t.” The thought, deliberately hurting the other mech, the sharp hot slice of a blade on a line, the pink spurt of energon, he…couldn’t.  How could you hurt what you loved?

And in that moment he realized that he did love Drift, even as he felt the white mech curl away from him, an agonized reflex of rejection.

 


	12. Chapter 12

PG-13

IDW

Blurr, Drift, Kup

 

“Having fun?”  Blurr gave a winner’s smile as he sat down on the washrack bench, before turning to idly sweep a rag up the elegant lines of his lower legs, the housings over the powerful pistons.

A tilt of the white helm, uncomprehending.  “Rather be fighting,” he said, cautiously.  It was true. This sitting around waiting for a mission was tedious enough, without the tension among he and Perceptor and Blurr that has thickened and roughened the air between them.  Too much energy, swirling around, currents he couldn’t read or control. They needed to be directed at an enemy, unifying them against something they could work together against.

Drift was…tired. That was it.  Tired of trying to navigate an emotional maze knowing how blunt and awkward he was, tired of standing on the brink of wincing with every word, every step. 

A cocky shrug. “Told you he was boring, Drift.”  Blurr leaned in, giving a teasing swipe with his rag over Drift’s forearm.

Drift frowned. “Not that.”  He didn’t want to talk about Perceptor.  It seemed everywhere he went, his interfacing partners, his relationship issues, seemed to fill the air, like a sour stink of old transfluid.  He was getting tired of that.  Exhausted, worn down as thousands of years of war had never worn at him.

“You know I’m always available,” Blurr winked.  “And I can even be convinced to forgive you.”  The rag swept down, the end flicking over the white pelvic span.  “Or at least,” he purred, “it’d be fun to try, right?” 

 

[***]

Drift tossed on his berth.  Childish, he thought, optics flicking to where he’d braced his Great Sword across the door, some heavy-handed symbolic reminder to keep him here, keep him in his quarters. Keep him in here, with the sword and all it stood for, and Perceptor and Blurr and all the messy complications out.  

If only it worked.

He flopped onto his side, turning his back to the door, as if he could make it go away.  He still stung from the other’s rejection, hating that he’d pushed it, hating that he’d needed it to begin with. How selfish could he be? How awful, forcing his desires, his twisted needs, onto the other mech. 

His body was a tight curl that tried to shut out the world, same way, in the gutters, he’d tried to make the ugliness, the darkness, the smell go away.  But all his sullen will, all his hard resolve, did nothing against this, because he knew, deep down, that this was his fault, this knot of tension and emotion was entirely his responsibility.

This is what you get for trying, Drift.  Relationships, emotions, love? This stuff isn’t for you. Like the beautiful polishes and luxurious meals you’d glimpse on holovids, or on the upper class mechs slumming in the Red Zone.  Not for him.  Never. 

And here’s why.  You can’t handle it. 

A soft chime at his door. 

Nothing, just emptiness.   Emptiness which had stirred up so much rancor among what was once a functioning team.

Nothing here. No one. 

Another chime, and then a voice, as if he had any doubt: Perceptor’s quiet tone, “Drift?”  Coming to you, despite your vile selfishness.

 A hesitation, as if the mech on the other side of the door had done the same—trying to make himself smaller, invisible, withdrawing back into himself. 

And then nothing, a series of footsteps leaving Drift behind, leaving him with the shattered promise he’d made in ruins, stained by his cowardice, his inability, and he was left alone, utterly alone.

As he deserved.

 

[***]

Drift slunk to the refectory late into recharge cycle, padding past the other quarters like a thief, audios searching in the dark velvet of the humming ship around him.  He drew a ration, gulping it quickly, the way he had for ages, sucking down fuel before a battle, intent only on the upcoming, not the now.  The way a Decepticon fueled, or a guttermech; not the way an Autobot did—leisurely, looking around, spacing it with conversation.  No one to talk to, even if he did trust himself with words.

“Beginning to think you were a ghost, Drift.” The voice behind him startled him, shoulders flinching, bruising his mouth with the cube.

Beginning to wish I was, he thought.  “I’m here, Kup,” he said, softly, trusting himself only to facts.

 “So I noticed.” 

Drift turned around, slowly, lowering the cube. “I don’t belong here.” 

“What? In the ship?  In the chow hall?” Kup gave a sort of grin, deliberately misunderstanding.

“Here.  The Wreckers. The Autobots.”  

“Says who? ‘Cause I say you’re just fine.”

Drift shook his head.  “Messing things up since I got here.”

A tip of the battered green helm. “And by ‘things’, you mean your love life.”

The phrase rocked Drift back for a klik: ‘love’ life was hardly what he’d call it.  “That…whole thing. Yes.”

“Son. Lemme tell you something.  Wreckers thrive on conflict. We turn everything into a no-holds-barred, high stakes game. Everything.  You shoulda seen the time the twins had a drunken contest to see who could vomit the farthest.”  He pulled a face. “Okay, maybe shouldn’t have seen that. But you get the point.  Conflict. It’s what we do.”

Drift shook his head. “It’s not. Not in this case.”  If it were, he could handle it.  But one look in Perceptor’s optics, one brush against Blurr’s almost angrily possessive EM, told him otherwise. This wasn’t fighting for fun. 

Kup rolled his optics, moving to hook a chair with his ankle and drop down into it.  He gestured across the table at the other seat.  “Want to talk about it?” 

Drift hesitated, weight shifting forward, but not quite committing to the move. “Not really.”

A bark of laughter, and Drift winced, thinking how the sound must echo up the corridor and who—sleepless—might hear it.  “You gonna make me pull rank, then?”  Another point at the chair.

Drift lowered himself down, gingerly, almost as if he expected the chair to break under him. 

“So.”  Kup grinned. 

Drift stared for a long moment at the cube still in his hands.  “Ruining everything,” he murmured.  He raised the cube to his mouth, tossing the rest of it down.

“Only thing you’re ruining is some nice fuel by suckin’ it down like that,” Kup said.

Drift frowned, setting the cube down. 

“Little more precision, Drift. What are you ‘ruining’?”

Drift’s optics studied the cube, as though it were fascinating, as though in its pink dregs he could find some truth.  “Blurr. Perceptor.”  He knew that was an inadequate answer, even to his own thinking.  “Perceptor wants more than I can give.  Blurr…I don’t know what he wants.  Thought he just wanted no commitments.”  That he could have handled. But he’d become some pawn in a game he didn’t even know the rules of.

Kup gave a sage nod. “Nothin’ Blurr wants is that easy, though.” 

I was, Drift thought, sourly. Fell right into it.  “They’re at each other’s throats over…me.” He shook his head. It sounded ridiculous, something from a holovid advertisement he’d seen. And he knew—knew with every ion in his circuitry—that he was no romantic hero.  Case in point: how thoroughly he’d managed to destroy this. 

“Know what I’m not hearing?”  Kup reached into his storage for one of his cy-gars, clamping it in his mouth before continuing. “Not hearing what you want out of this.”

That threw him, and he rocked back on the chair’s hard edge for a moment.  “Don’t want anything,” he said, but it was a reflex, an instinct, millions of years of defense.

“Not buyin’ that slag, Drift.  Neither are you.”  A pointed look.  He pointed at Drift with the cy-gar.  “Problem is, you’re too busy worrying about what others want.  Can’t make everyone happy.”  His optics softened, as though this knowledge was hard won in his own life. “You’ll just kill yourself trying.  What you need to do,” another jab with the cy-gar, “is figure out what you want. “ He grinned. “You don’t look like a mech who’s used to not knowing.”

“…new territory for me,” Drift admitted, quietly.  His body and his spark were pulling him in different directions, and everyone around him was getting caught in the backdraft.

“Figured.”  Kup grinned, sitting back, chomping on the cy-gar.  “Truth is, son, we’re Wreckers. We’re survivors. Ain’t nothin’ you can do is gonna break us.” He gave a nod and something almost like a wink. “Now, stop tearin’ yourself up about it.” 

Drift nodded, bowing his helm over his cube.  “You’re right.”

Another bark of laughter. “Always am. Just ask Springer.”  Kup rolled a shoulder,  before pushing to his feet.  “You think on that, now. I gotta go deal with this cargo drop comin’ in in three cycles.”  He winked. “Keep all the privileges for the old timers, right?”


	13. Chapter 13

NC-17  
IDW  
Blurr, Drift, Perceptor  
sticky, angst  
  
  
  


Drift hesitated for a long moment, finger hovering over the last digit of the keycode to Perceptor’s room. Odds are, he thought, Perceptor had changed the code.  He would have.  So this whole thing was just a gesture, one doomed to fail, but he had to make it anyway. Because Kup’s words rang true.  And action was better—far better—than teetering on indecision.

He pressed the last number, almost jerking back as the door actually cycled open.  The familiar, air—the scent of Perceptor’s systems, the combination of the polish he used, his system oil, the tang of the charging packs for his pistols: it was all almost distressingly familiar.  

A shifting sound, and blue optics slowly warming in the darkness. Drift stepped through, letting the door whisper closed behind him. 

“Drift?”  Perceptor’s voice, thin and scratchy from his powered-down vocalizer.

 Drift nodded, knowing the blue optics would convey the answer; not trusting his own voice, his own words.  He crossed to the berth:  he’d stayed in the room himself long enough to navigate it in the dark.  He dropped to the berth, hands finding Perceptor’s shoulders, hauling him upward into a kiss.

 A hesitation, and then the long arms twined around him, Perceptor’s mouth opening into the kiss, glossa shyly seeking Drift’s.  Drift’s hand wandered over the other’s body, down the chestplate, teasing over the vacuum hoses. 

 Drift’s hands slipped lower, finding the interface hatch, releasing  Perceptor’s hatch, before delving even lower, fingertips riding around the rims of Perceptor’s equipment covers.

 “Drift!”  Perceptor’s gasp broke through the kiss, as his interface equipment fired on, his spike tingling awake as its cover clicked aside.

 Drift answered with a husky laugh, sliding lower down the other mech’s frame, mouth trailing over the blue chestplate, the reinforcing gaskets, flicking down the abdomen before circling around the spike’s housing rim. Perceptor shuddered, his hands clutching at Drift’s shoulders, as the glossa flicked into the housing, against the spike’s head nodes.

 Drift growled, mouth parting, taking the spike inside, glossa exploring the spike’s surface, finding and circling the small sensor-nodes, lip plates ringing around the spike’s base.  Drift knew so many tricks, learned from the gutters, where he’d had to do this, at times, to beg for fuel, to bribe a guard to go uplevel. Sometimes, it was his only fuel, a taste bitter and salted with humiliation, so unlike the sweet taste of Autobot energon.

 This time, though, he used those skills willingly, wanting them, wanting the little tricks of pleasure, those that aroused and held off, those that built the overload to the point where it tore itself, almost with violence, over a mech’s systems, and left him shuddering, weak-kneed and wrung out.  He wanted it, and all of Perceptor’s startled, self-conscious squirming did not stand in his way.

 Perceptor arched up, howling, as the overload burst over him, charge crackling from his joints, his spike flooding Drift’s mouth with transfluid. Drift swallowed, hungrily, hands raking down the lean thighs, before he rose up, glossa tracing one long line up the spike’s underside, and climbing up Perceptor’s frame, one hand dodging between his thighs. He straddled the other mech, guiding the still-pressurized spike into his valve, dark thighs spreading over the black pelvic frame.

 “Drift,” Perceptor whispered, hands coming up to cup Drift’s face, fingers tender along the buccal armor.  Drift gave a lopsided smile, bending over, rolling his pelvic frame over Perceptor’s, riding the other mech’s spike, arousal hissing between his dentae.

 “Yes,” Drift managed, all he trusted himself to say, all he needed to say. Words didn’t matter—this did: the hard, shivering pleasure seizing Perceptor, Drift pulling lust from the quiet, red mech, seeing the wonder and surprise, as well as a tremulous want, in the other’s optics.  He cinched his valve snug around the spike, keeping his pace ruthlessly slow and even, vents harsh and intense, stirring the air between them.  Yes.  Yes to this, yes to everything. 

 His spark swelled, almost to the point of pain, as Perceptor jolted beneath him, another scalding rush of transfluid torn from his body, another hard burst of pleasure riding roughshod over Perceptor’s usual resolve. He covered the mouth in a kiss, before the red mech could formulate any questions, ask about the past, invoke a future. He’d made up his mind: he’d taken Kup’s advice.

 But he didn’t trust that his answer would survive any great scrutiny, so he pressed into the kiss, hands stroking over the other mech’s body, gentle, soothing sweeps and strokes, until the overload’s languor pulled Perceptor into what Drift prayed was a delirious recharge.

 [***]

 Drift moved slowly, the way he’d learned in the gutters when sneaking up on prey, remembering the old way. Shift, hold, count, count , count.  Shift.  Hold.

 Finally, he stood beside Perceptor, looking down at the blissful expression on the mech’s face, the silver stains on the other’s armor a tangible sign of their shared pleasure.  Drift reached forward, brushing one hand over the cheek, resting his palm on the other’s chassis, on the reinforced chestplate over the spark.  He tried to think of a word to whisper, a promise or pledge.  But he didn’t trust himself even to unwitnessed promises, and after a moment he felt his hands as some…filthy weight, smudging Perceptor, staining what he could be.

 Running out of time, he told himself. 

 He snatched his hand back, turning on his heel, and leaving, not trusting himself even to a last, backward glance.

 [***EPILOGUE***]

 “Looking for Drift?” Blurr drawled over his cube of energon, seated cross legged in the rec room as Perceptor walked in.

 Perceptor stiffened, his tanks seeming to be frozen cold as space by Blurr’s grin.  “I was.”  Defeat in his voice, surrender. There was no point withholding it from Blurr. Let him see, let him know, let him crow over this victory, Perceptor thought. And I…and I will hold this pain against me, and never let myself fall like this again.

 Blurr cocked his shoulder in a shrug. “Left this morning.  Hopped the supply freighter.”

 “Left.”  The word seemed to be the most despairing, awful word in the language.

 “Yep,”  Blurr took a casual sip. “Easy come, easy go, right?” His optics glittered, giving the words sharp edges.

 Perceptor couldn’t even summon a response to that: he was too busy trying to convince himself the ground wasn’t sliding away from under his feet, the decking wasn’t bucking and heaving around him.  He clutched at the back of the couch with one hand. 

 “Shouldn’t have expected much manners from him,” Blurr said, philosophically.  “Didn’t even say goodbye.”

 The ground seemed to stabilize under Perceptor’s feet, his vision clearing from the whirling vertigo of heartbreak.  “No,” he said, his systems still tingling from Drift’s body against his and he realized, suddenly, the whole night, his whole self snapping into focus, realizing that that word…was a lie. Drift had said goodbye.

 He dared not allow himself to call it anything more. The lie was enough, warming his spark, that in the end, in all his petty envy, he had gotten more than Blurr.

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And....there we go, I guess. I remember seeing so much Blurr/Drift art and asking my LJ friends how they thought the relationship worked, because my notion of Blurr's personality is based from his Spotlight where he's....kind of an entitled jerk. Someone suggested that Blurr was a bit of a rockstar, used to getting what he wanted, and Drift was new and shiny and exotic and sparkly, and thus something Blurr would want. 
> 
> In the end, I think I couldn't bear to break Perceptor's heart entirely. Blurr can survive rejection: Blurr, in my head, doesn't let too much get to him. He's still the celebrity racer at heart. But Perceptor....wouldn't make it. 
> 
> If you ever asked where the hell this could possibly fit in canon (because LOL I ask that of everything I write) it's before they arrive on Cybertron to help fight the Swarm. And that's...why Blurr seems entirely content to leave Drift out alone among the Insecticons. He's moved on. 
> 
> Anyway, SO MUCH BLATHER. I hope you enjoyed parts of it. Or something. Wow I suck at these, which is why I probably never write them. ;-;


End file.
